Frannie Kelley

She's the one behind the curtain of the biggest and best-loved rap and R&B songs in recent memory.

"I don't want anybody to do exactly what I'm doing," says the Atlanta rapper. "I want people to look at why I'm doing what I'm doing. And if you agree with that, you go do what you do about it."

"My job is only to be a servant of the community, and just to inspire. That's it. That's my whole job, and I know that."

His songs make your brain briefly unbound and unwieldy. Same goes for this conversation.

The young soul singer refuses to take sides in R&B's generational divide, so his songs all sound familiar, even when they're several things at once.

We're about 300 emails and one month in. We started with seven people and swelled to eight, though the composition of the group has changed a little bit. We're considering an 18-track album, which we've had for two weeks now, a few loose releases and guest ...

The artist and thinker, who just released a new album that's only one part of a larger multimedia conception, takes us from the drummers of Burundi to Adam Ant, Octavia Butler to David Bowie, Rakim to Young Thug. We also hit on ageism in rap, artistry for sale and how ...

We're really trying here. We've added a number to our group, the venerable Ann Powers, and yesterday we fanned out on both coasts to put ourselves in position to receive the latest Kanye album in a handful of different circumstances. We had people watching the livestream at work ...

Crown Heights came to North Hollywood so we could talk about crossed signals on the highways between artist and industry. We also got into rap performance, being superstitious about writing, being not great about networking and this feeling: "I felt like I was too smart to do a record and ...

Maybe we have jumped the gun. We very badly want G.O.O.D. Fridays back (we're not alone). Surprise releases are fun and everything, but the build of a month(s)-long stretch is better. We would like to talk about music together, and not only by collectively spazzing out and crashing ...

New father Freddie Gibbs spoke with Microphone Check about his inspirations, including the memoirs of Rick James and George Clinton, his business acumen, what the war in the streets is really about and, of course, Gucci.

FRANNIE KELLEY: We're really excited to talk to you after another album.

FREDDIE GIBBS: ...

The Virginia Beach denizen spoke to Microphone Check about the reverse troll he laid on Def Jam with Darkest Before Dawn, what it's like to go back and forth with Puffy, the fallacies of textbooks, the perils of ignoring the youth and where he's going with King Push.

ALI SHAHEED ...

The rapper, who hails from Maryland but now resides in the Los Angeles area, came through to talk about the road to his second album, The Incredible True Story, fending off critics and the language he uses to to remind himself of his blessings and his possibilities.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: ...

Mac Miller met us in LA, which he had recently left. Ali and Mac have known each other for some time, so this interview was a chance for them to reconnect on the other side of some months of internal turmoil and growth the Pittsburgh rapper had to get through. ...

Here we are not going to begin with the premise that Hamilton, bona fide talk of the town, is unlikely. Hamilton was only a matter of time. If we're truthful, it's late. Disney should have made bank off this idea. ...

Masta Ace had his first drink at a Cold Chillin' Christmas party. This was after he graduated from the University of Rhode Island. The national popularity of "Born to Roll" in the mid-'90s — and an amount of drama related to tensions between the coasts at that time — was ...

This is the second half of Microphone Check's interview last year with producer and rapper Large Professor. You can listen to and read part one here. Part two covers the making of Illmatic, Paul C's role and Ali's favorite Extra P lines.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: Can I go ...

The death of the highly respected hip-hop figure prompted an outpouring of tribute and personal stories from his community this weekend.

Last spring, way back in 2014, we sat down with Large Professor, partly on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Illmatic but mostly because he's the reason for much of the New York rap we both love so much.

MUHAMMAD: The Extra P.

LARGE PROFESSOR: Yes, sir.

...

Vince Staples made his debut album, Summertime '06, so that people who hear it will know how he felt then, as a young teenager in Long Beach, Calif. "That's when we understood the power we had in fear," he says. "Because it's either they're scared of you or they're better ...