Jason King is the Chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music where he was the Institute’s founding full-time faculty member working alongside music impresario Clive Davis to develop the program. A longtime music critic and journalist for publications like Pitchfork, Slate, Vibe, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Spin, Billboard, The Root, and Vice, he has also published numerous scholarly essays and authored The Michael Jackson Treasures, a Barnes and Noble exclusive which has been translated into more than 7 languages. With NPR he served as host and co-producer of the flagship video documentary series Noteworthy, curator and host of NPR’s 24/7 streaming radio channel NPRandB, and producer and host of the 2020 NPR series Pop Talks. He hosted CNN’s original podcast series Soundtracks: The B-Sides, and appears in numerous music documentaries including two by Spike Lee. He was the series consultant on the Grammy and Emmy nominated eight-part PBS series Soundbreaking. As Creative Director of his own entertainment company Superlatude, Jason has served as a music marketing and branding expert for Drake and Jay Z, Katy Perry, Timbaland, Madonna, Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre and Kanye West. He is an inaugural member of the Hip-Hop council at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is currently at work on a biography of Freddie Mercury.

Jamila Woods is a Chicago-bred singer-songwriter, educator, and award-winning poet whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison.  Following the 2016 release of her debut album HEAVN via Chicago label Closed Sessions, Jamila received critical acclaim for her singular genre-blending sound that is both rooted in soul and wholly modern. Her sophomore album LEGACY! LEGACY! was released via JagJaguwar Records in 2019. It features 12 tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced her life and work. As a touring artist, Jamila has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Common, Brittany Howard, and many others. A Pushcart Prize-winning poet, her work was featured in the Library of America anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song.

Jesse McCarthy is Assistant Professor in the departments of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His articles and reviews are published or forthcoming in Transposition, African American Review, and NOVEL and he is a contributor to Richard Wright in Context, Ralph Ellison in Context (forthcoming), and The Cambridge Companion to the Essay as well as a new introduction for the Norton Library edition of W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and an introduction for a new edition of Vincent O. Carter’s The Bern Book. He is the author of the collection of essays Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? and a novel The Fugitivities.