Music producer Peter CottonTale talks about his work with Google

• Google released its Year in Search campaign on Wednesday, featuring an original song by music producer Peter CottonTale. This is the first time that Google has ordered an original song for its Year in Search campaign, the company confirmed to Business Insider.
• The song stars Chance the rapper, singer and actress Cynthia Erivo and the Chicago Children’s Choir.
• CottonTale, 29, told Insider the song’s goals were both to showcase black creatives and the narrative of loss through the perspective of the black community, which has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
• CottonTale says more than 80 black artists, engineers, producers and managers came together to create the song.
• Google will donate $ 35,000 to the Chicago Children’s Choir and $ 15,000 to the Merit School of Music. In 2020, only 3.7% of Google employees were black, up from 2.4% in 2014, as Fortune reports.
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

This summer, Google sent music producer Peter CottonTale an email. The tech giant wanted to know if the Grammy-winning artist, best known for his work with Chance the Rapper, could create a song describing the past year for his Year in Search.

The Year in Search presents the moments and the main trends of the past year, based on the words or questions that Internet users have continuously searched for. For example, top trends this year included Juneteenth, Black Lives Matter, and Murder of Hornets. This is the first time Google has offered an original Year in Search song, the company confirmed to Insider.

“Trying to make a sound that peaks in 2020 … was honestly way too sad,” CottonTale told Insider. “Because for many people [the year 2020] sounded like a loss, or it felt like a lot of challenges in their personal lives. ”

Instead, CottonTale decided to “write the optimistic view of how we’re going to get in 2021” through the perspective of black people – a community that has been disproportionately hit hard by the pandemic.

More than 40% of black businesses have closed permanently during the pandemic, compared to 17% of white-owned businesses, CNBC reported in June; the unemployment rate for blacks reached 14.6% in July compared to 9.2% for whites; and blacks have been infected with COVID at rates three times higher than whites, according to the National Urban League.

CottonTale spent two months, encompassing multiple lockdowns and a fear of COVID-19, working remotely with the Google team and more than 80 black artists, engineers, producers and managers to create the song “Together” for Google. He released it independently and retained all rights associated with the song.

The song stars actress Cynthia Erivo and Chance the rapper, as well as the Chicago Children’s Choir, and premiered Wednesday on the Google home page, with a short film.

At the request of Cottondale and its director, Binta Niambi Brown, Google is donating $ 50,000 to Chicago’s Children Choir and the Merit School of Music. The tech firm’s diversity initiatives contrast with the fact that in 2020, only 3.7% of all Google employees were black. This number is up from 2.4% in 2014, as reported by Fortune.

“All the stars have aligned themselves with this collaboration with Peter CottonTale,” Google Production Manager Patrick Marzullo told Insider. “The tone and the story he wanted to tell through the music fit perfectly with our vision for the film, so from there it was easy to give him the time and space to do what he does. better.”

Courtesy of Peter CottonTale

CottonTale continued to work during COVID-19 shutdowns and strict regulations

With the song’s release, CottonTale (born Peter Wilkins) wraps up a year that, like most entrepreneurs, has been a bit bumpy.

He was able to release his first solo album earlier this year, but his Chicago-based recording studio, which he opened just a year and a half ago, has been hit by lockdowns amid the pandemic. While recording the song for Google, he also juggled how to keep the staff in his studio and keep the recording studios extremely clean.

Then, in the middle of mixing the song, his engineer caught COVID-19 and CottonTale had to self-isolate for five days before he could get tested. His engineer had to lock himself in a room while finishing the demo tapes.

“As a business owner, I have never had to deal with a pandemic in the workplace,” he said. “I never thought it would boil down to coming to the end of my workplace.”

“We had to shut down the studio for a week,” Brown recalls. “We would find ways to do what we could.”

For example, the 50-person orchestra used on the track could not enter the studio to record due to COVID-19 regulations. “They had to record for three days,” Brown said. “Which took longer.”

CottonTale said he knew he was competing with other creative ideas that Google had released during the year in search, which made him work even harder.

One of CottonTale’s main goals was to find a way to center the perspective of black women, a group he said has been “most affected by this year”.

“We knew we wanted a female voice,” CottonTale manager Binta Niambi Brown and Cynthia Erivo told Insider was an obvious choice. “We felt like the singer had to be someone who gives off the best of the diva, and that’s Cynthia.

Tommaso Drowning / Stringer / Getty Images

In addition to bringing in Erivo and his longtime collaborator Chance the Rapper, CottonTale has incorporated singer Jamila Woods, all-black Matt Jones Re-Collective Orchestra, and has young poet Kofi Dadzie do a voiceover for the accompanying film of the song.

In what CottonTale said was a nice coincidence, all of these black performers have black managers as well. “I can’t take credit for it,” he said. “But I’m glad it works.”

Enabling black creatives to participate in this project was extremely important to CottonTale.

So often, CottonTale said, black people are the ones who are left out of the opportunities that would help them grow. For example, he said it was important to expose the children of the Chicago Children’s Choir to as many “possibilities as possible”.

Brown said it was important to her and CottonTale that the children’s choir be paid for their work on the song, and chose the Merit School of Music because “part of their purpose is to make sure that children from all walks of life come together through music. “

Barry Crowbar / Stringer / Getty Images

CottonTale said he has been using prayer to get through the past few months. That, and he made sure to save the finances for all those rainy days. Brown said she will never forget the phone call that one day took place with Google public relations, talking about all the black talent that was mobilized for this project.

“From our first call it was clear that he was inspired and knew exactly what he wanted to do,” said Marzullo. “We provided the research data and it only took a few days for him to show us the first signs of his magic in a demo.”

CottonTale said he got scared when big companies ran ads about black people. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I hope a black person is in the writer’s room,’” he said. “The importance of employing Black is such a necessity for the advancement of our culture.”

This time there was.