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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G Herbo came up in Chicago's drill scene — a style of music praised for its lack of affect and criticized for its portrayal of violence. But on his new album PTSD, he drops the mask and cries.
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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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The death of the highly respected hip-hop figure prompted an outpouring of tribute and personal stories from his community this weekend. -
The Compton rapper's set was made up of personal songs that built with increasing intensity. There was no affect — all legitimacy and promise.
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The singer and songwriter played a major role in creating a contemporary, conservative gospel sound. -
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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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. -
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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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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To a roomful of captivated men, Sullivan sings "Stupid Girls," a new song that warns women to be careful with their hearts.
