Frannie Kelley
Frannie Kelley is co-host of the Microphone Check podcast with Ali Shaheed Muhammad.
Prior to hosting Microphone Check, Kelley was an editor at NPR Music. She was responsible for editing, producing and reporting NPR Music's coverage of hip-hop, R&B and the ways the music industry affects the music we hear, on the radio and online. She was also co-editor of NPR's music news blog, .
Kelley worked at NPR from 2007 until 2016. Her projects included a series on and overseeing a feature on women musicians. She also ran another series on and web-produced the Arts Desk's series on vocalists, called . Most recently, her piece on was selected to be a part of the Best Music Writing 2012 Anthology.
Prior to joining NPR, Kelley worked in book publishing at Grove/Atlantic in a variety of positions from 2004 to 2007. She has a B.A. in Music Criticism from New York University.
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"I made a promise to myself," says the Detroit rapper. "I would never ever not follow my heart again. That way if I rise or fall, sink or swim, it's by my own choice and my own decisions."
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The producer and multi-instrumentalist on the Kendrick Lamar album he's working on, Snoop and love. -
After 24 years in the music business, the producer and rapper from Compton, Calif., knows what's going on. He told Microphone Check studio secrets, a Rick James story, and all about the funk.
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The Rhode Island-born producer and DJ tells the story of the father/son talk he once had with Cam'ron, delineates EDM and hip-hop and calls out the whole music industry for being flaky.
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The singer and songwriter played a major role in creating a contemporary, conservative gospel sound. -
"Whatever I feel like is missing, or whatever type of track or energy I'm trying to feel or I feel like I'm not hearing in wherever music is at that period of time, I try to create it."
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"I want to get whatever's on my chest off my chest when it feels right," says the rapper, who makes songs that turn the personal into the political.
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"What really blowed my mind was the way it unified a room full of people," says the Miami rapper, about his earliest memories of hip-hop. "That's what we all have in common."
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"Me and Mike have managed to find a decent way to express something symbolically that kids need to be able to say simply," says El-P. "I'm taking it over."
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He who signed De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Digital Underground sat down with his old friend Ali Shaheed Muhammad to tell stories about Tribe, ODB, Cypress Hill and everybody in between.
