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 20-year-old started making viral videos; now, he has released his debut album. He owes his success, in part, to a social media-fueled youth culture revolution that prizes teen perspectives. -
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. -
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. -
"I want to get whatever's on my chest off my chest when it feels right," says the rapper, who makes songs that turn the personal into the political. -
A superstar cast made a real life love story — disguised as an action movie — just because. -
If this is the first time you're hearing of somebody called Your Old Droog, don't even trip. -
"Me and Mike have managed to find a decent way to express something symbolically that kids need to be able to say simply," says El-P. "I'm taking it over." -
He who signed De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Digital Underground sat down with his old friend Ali Shaheed Muhammad to tell stories about Tribe, ODB, Cypress Hill and everybody in between. -
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.
