Music

MC Sha-Rock was the first woman to rap on national television in 1981, but hip-hop's double standards have left her legacy as the first female MC buried. Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR This story was adapted from Episode 2 of Louder Than A Riot, Season Two: Baby girl, you're only funky as your last cut. To hear more about MC Sha-Rock and the fight to situate women in the rap […]

Megan Thee Stallion. Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR In December 2022, one of the biggest trials of the year unfolded in LA. Tory Lanez was facing more than 20 years in prison on charges of shooting fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion, and the internet was intensely divided: You were either pro-Tory or pro-Megan, and there was nothing else to say about it. Tory was found guilty of assaulting Megan and […]

"When I was first listening to [your music]," Morning Edition host Leila Fadel tells singer-songwriter Tianna Esperanza, "I was more listening to just the music, before the lyrics really set into my head – this sort of sweet track, like a renaissance-style music. And then you hear what you're saying." Sometimes, when I'm walking and a man looks at me, I think of all the ways I could make him […]

When you go back and listen to De La's early run you're getting a lesson about how hip-hop itself was born, how it survived in the past, how it functions at its most imaginative and how the artform can live on in the future. Jackie Lay/NPR For a long time, De La Soul tracks felt like Easter eggs, littered across the landscape for only the most enterprising young rap fans […]

BBoy B, Flash, 38 Slugs and Skol's 'Frankie Knuckles' tribute mural is displayed in the Fulton Market neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois on July 6, 2019. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images Last month, when Beyoncé became the winningest musician in the history of the Grammys, the prize that put her over the top was in the category of best electronic/dance album. And when she stepped onto the stage at Crypto.com Arena in Los […]

Wayne Shorter, photographed in 1985. David Redfern/Redferns Updated March 2, 2023 at 1:58 PM ET Wayne Shorter, the 12-time Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer and the creator of one of the singular sounds in contemporary jazz over more than half a century, died on Thursday, March 2 in Los Angeles. Shorter was 89 years old. Cem Kurosman, a publicist at Blue Note Records, which released Shorter's recent recordings, confirmed his death […]