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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We spoke to the rapper, producer and head of Awful Records, while we were in Atlanta in May. Our onstage conversation was brief but covered a lot of ground fast.
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We went to Atlanta to talk to the three-man production team behind some of the greatest songs ever: Ray Murray, Rico Wade and Sleepy Brown.
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We put our legendary co-host in the hot seat and he spoke on how he evaluates music, how his faith influences his work ethic and how much he cares about getting credit. And that's just the first half.
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The producer and multi-instrumentalist on the Kendrick Lamar album he's working on, Snoop and love.
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The singer and songwriter played a major role in creating a contemporary, conservative gospel sound.
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A superstar cast made a real life love story — disguised as an action movie — just because.
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We asked the King of Auto-Tune if he'd grace the Tiny Desk without any embellishment or effects to show what's really made his career: his voice, and those songs.
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"The best way to represent the places where you from is be yourself, completely," says the musician and actor.
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The Oakland group most widely known for the ageless "93 'til Infinity" has made a new concept album based on a true story. To make it, they went old school.
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The rapper from Gary, Ind., moved to L.A. 10 years ago, where he met Madlib, a producer revered for his collaborations. The two of them have now made an album Gibbs thinks can't be touched.