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, The Record.
Kelley worked at NPR from 2007 until 2016. Her projects included a series on hip-hop in 1993 and overseeing a feature on women musicians. She also ran another series on the end of the decade in music and web-produced the Arts Desk's series on vocalists, called 50 Great Voices. Most recently, her piece on Why You Should Listen to Odd Future 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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Once part of Digable Planets, Butler continues to be a hip-hop innovator. He stays connected to new music through his son Jazz, who records as Lil Tracy. -
G Herbo came up in Chicago's drill scene — a style of music praised for its lack of affect and criticized for its portrayal of violence. But on his new album PTSD, he drops the mask and cries.
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Music fans would seem to have gained a lot of power over the past decade. Their online fury has silenced those who would dare to criticize their faves. But the music industry has caught on. -
Perhaps no contemporary musician understands the rules of the streaming ecosystem better than the singer Khalid, who emerged as a teenager and is now one of the most listened-to artists in the world. -
Will Johnson is a successful producer and songwriter who found himself questioning the music industry and his place in it. So this time, he's trying a business approach from the world of fine art. -
The death of the highly respected hip-hop figure prompted an outpouring of tribute and personal stories from his community this weekend. -
The pillar of New York's ASAP Mob speaks about his aesthetic choices, the way he imagines our far off future and what he's learned from Missy Elliott.
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Steinberg began managing Tupac Shakur in the late '80s and stepped away from that role in 1993. She didn't manage another musician for almost 20 years, until she started working with Earl Sweatshirt.
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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.
