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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The rapper Drakeo the Ruler titled his latest album after the prison phone service provider GTL, whose lines he used to record it, leaving a trail to follow the money through a controversial industry. -
El-P and Killer Mike have always had their fingers on the pulse, and their fourth album once again captures the mood of a country on edge after George Floyd's death sparked national protests. -
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. -
The rapper, who died suddenly in September at 26, built a community of musicians around him that crossed boundaries. Many of those artists showed up to memorialize Miller in concert last week. -
The death of the highly respected hip-hop figure prompted an outpouring of tribute and personal stories from his community this weekend. -
The Long Beach, Calif., rapper made his debut album, Summertime '06, so that people who hear it will know how he felt then. "That's when we understood the power we had in fear," he says. -
"This is the first thing that I've said that I fully stand behind," the 21-year-old rapper says of his new album. "I've never been this transparent with myself or with music."
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The singer and songwriter played a major role in creating a contemporary, conservative gospel sound.
