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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For a special episode of Microphone Check we invited Prince Paul, Mike Dean, Faith Newman, Stretch Armstrong and Ralph McDaniels to tell stories about a singularly productive year in the culture. -
In these days of dusty, overbooked festivals run rampant, a smooth-sounding, tight bill with the promise of a good-looking, down to party hometown crowd makes that cash register sing. -
The high-minded Atlanta quartet has reunited 18 years after its debut album and seven years after Cee-Lo Green's pop smash "Crazy." -
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. -
A high-concept collaborative album by a veteran rapper and a film composer knits together hip-hop and soul music. -
The group's 1993 debut was the opening shot of an audacious plan to open the music industry to hip-hop made way outside the mainstream. -
After he helped to develop the bluesy, driving hard bop style in the '50s and '60s, his funkier commercial hit recordings shaped black pop music through the advent of hip-hop. A committed music educator, the Detroit native was 80 when he died last week. -
Last Friday the first performance in a new arena signaled a change in both Brooklyn and hip-hop. -
Solo rappers might be the norm, but one Los Angeles management company is hitting with a group.
