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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The death of the highly respected hip-hop figure prompted an outpouring of tribute and personal stories from his community this weekend. -
The singer and songwriter played a major role in creating a contemporary, conservative gospel sound. -
In almost every Hollywood depiction of the American military, at some point a bunch of guys will jog past the camera, singing and stepping in unison. That rhythm infiltrated the Army in 1944. -
The rap duo OutKast launched what may be its farewell tour over the weekend at Coachella, but the group and its fans, who have waited a decade for the reunion, might not have the same expectations. -
From the birthplace of Stax and Sun Records, and the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the pair of rapper-producers snatched soul music and put it to work for a new generation. -
Three black musicians — a punk bassist, an L.A. rapper and a part-time guitarist — took on a name with ugly associations to make music that can't be categorized. -
Session musician Stephen Bruner has played bass in other people's bands for more than a decade. He can play metal, R&B, hip-hop, jazz. With his second album, he's stepping to the front of the stage. -
Terius Nash, better known as The-Dream, has written some of the most memorable recent pop hits. But when he writes songs for himself, he makes R&B.
