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 Atlanta rapper, actor and businessman spoke about being mentored by Andrew Young and using songwriting to talk to himself, as well as everybody else. -
The hometown shows the duo played had a bittersweet quality because people thought it might be their last chance to see one of the most-respected and best-loved groups of all time together. -
"The best way to represent the places where you from is be yourself, completely," says the musician and actor. -
On Sunday, Sept. 14, 20 years and one day after Biggie Smalls' debut album Ready to Die was released, we gathered four of the musician's friends in Brooklyn to recall the man they knew. -
The Brooklyn rapper spoke to Microphone Check about the music business, the old neighborhood, the kids and a theoretical campaign to be Mayor of New York City. -
On a steamy morning upstairs in a record lover's paradise KING laid down a gorgeous version of one of the songs that lit up Twitter three years ago and put the trio on Prince's radar.
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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. -
Standing on a balcony in her hometown of New Orleans, the singer stops an unsuspecting crowd, and all the hustle and bustle of the French Quarter, dead in its tracks.
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"Now is the time that I'm actually thinking of myself as a musician," says Issa. "Things are hitting me like, 'Oh, damn, you have this responsibility.'" -
To a roomful of captivated men, Sullivan sings "Stupid Girls," a new song that warns women to be careful with their hearts.
