This one just brings a smile to my face. "Sunday Candy" is a big warm hug of a song by the Chicago music collective the Social Experiment, which includes artists like Chance the Rapper, Jamila Woods, and trumpeter Nico Segal (who dropped his old stage name "Donnie Trumpet" in protest after the 2016 election).
It's part rap, part gospel, and all heart. Chance delivers an ode to his churchgoing grandmother in the verses; Jamila Woods shifts focus in the bridge, weaving sex and the divine together (the way many great songs do). The rousing chorus borrows the electrifying refrain from "It's Gonna Rain" by the Thompson Community Singers, evoking both shelter from the Biblical flood and the warm welcome of a grandmother's house. And the one-shot, single-camera music video stages "Sunday Candy" as amateur theater, handmade props and all, perfectly reflecting the song's sense of authenticity and community:
It's a song that just invites you to bask in its feel-good glow, but there are wonderful layers too, if you're inclined to explore. Chance's verses are heavily autobiographical, but with one simple line, tossed off with a smile in his voice—"You singing too, but your grandma ain't my grandma"—he directly addresses his listeners and acknowledges the fact that we'll invest the song with our own associations, even as he insists on the specificity of his experience. It instantly sums up how a piece of art can be at once intensely personal and deeply universal, with the artist standing firm in the middle and maintaining both the distinction and the connection between the two. I think it's brilliant.
I love, too, how ambiguity, even in the way we hear a single word or phrase, allows for a multiplicity of meanings. Does Chance sing "I got a future so I'm singing for my grandma," "I got her features so I'm singing for my grandma," or (referring to his limited opportunities to sing on this particular album) "I got a feature so I'm singing for my grandma"? Does Woods sing "taking in my body like it's holy" or "take and eat my body like it's holy"? There's some debate in the annotated lyrics (and other unofficial transcriptions), but each interpretation offers connections and implications that feel equally satisfying. Like Walt Whitman, the song contains multitudes.
BONUS: Many thanks to my daughter for pointing me to the official video. But I fell in love with the song earlier, when I saw this soulful, slowed-down rendition performed at the White House, in front of the last real president of the United States:
It makes me emotional to see it now—the smiling faces of an audience of all colors, Sasha Obama's face all lit up as she sings along—and to think back on the days when they used to play music in the White House at all. Remember the music festivals, the poetry jams, the science fairs? The People's House used to be filled with the cultural activities of the people. Someday we'll fill it up with music again.
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