GUESS WHAT, BITCH? Coronavirus!” Cardi B’s shriek echoes until it resembles a siren. A hi-hat-heavy beat comes in on the rapper’s frantic warning: “Shit is real!” The words are from a 46-second video Cardi B posted on Instagram in March, broadcast to a shellshocked nation. But it was DJ iMarkkeyz who turned them into a cheeky club banger with visuals to match every beat drop—Childish Gambino, Beyoncé, Future, Elmo, and Bugs Bunny all get crunk as an animated coronavirus molecule floats by with a toothy smile like the alien villain in a kids’ cartoon.
The year looked bleak until iMarkkeyz (real name Brandon Markell Davidson) remixed it. “It’s a lot of wild nonsense going on,” says the 30-year-old producer-editor from behind his computer screen in East New York; he’s wearing rectangular Clark Kent glasses, a du-rag, and a plain black face mask with an iM printed on it. (Even in non-covid times, the mask is his signature look.) “But somebody’s gotta make people not live in fear.” Along with “Coronavirus,” he created joyful musical interludes for 2020’s other distressing news cycles. “Lose Yo Job,” centered on a viral clip of a Black woman being detained by a security guard, became a national anti-police-brutality protest anthem, making it all the way to a Saturday Night Live cold open featuring Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph. In November, his tongue-in-cheek remix of Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser repeating the words I hear a sound of victory arrived right as many Americans needed to hear it.
Esta historia es de la edición December 21, 2020-January 3, 2021 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 21, 2020-January 3, 2021 de New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
