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 label and its founder, Sean "Diddy" Combs, helped to shape much of what we take for granted in pop culture. The new documentary Can't Stop Won't Stop tells Bad Boy's story.
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The prolific rapper and mentor recorded a song the day he got out of federal prison this May — and he's put out 10 projects this year. His secret? "Don't never drop your head," he says.
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The rapper has spent the year on an extended victory tour. Here are the spoils, recorded in a stripped-down set with a minimal backing track and longtime producer Zaytoven on keys.
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In his new song, the soulful dance artist (formerly known as Gordon Voidwell) expresses confusion with elegance and intensity. Watching and listening feels like eavesdropping.
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"I'm telling the fans what I'm trying to tell myself because nobody was telling me at the time," says the rapper, who hails from Maryland.
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"It's liberating to realize you have the freedom to make mistakes. You have the time," says the Pittsburgh rapper, who lifted himself out of a dark period. "Because you're so small."
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The rise of the rapper from Paterson, N.J. with a trio of feel-good hits has felt inexorable and hilariously American. His debut album, finally here, is proof he did it his way.
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Don't call Hamilton unlikely: Lin-Manuel Miranda's lauded musical about the life of the Founding Father is Broadway crafted by an artist who knows rap to be our cultural lingua franca.
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"In Flushing, Queens, where I came from, we're right down the block from this fair, the Globe. Something about that town, it's just Olympic, Olympiad kind of a — we wanted to jump the highest."
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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.