Ali Shaheed Muhammad
Ali Shaheed Muhammad is a world-renowned producer, songwriter and musician, and a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, Lucy Pearl and production group The Ummah. He cowrote D'Angelo's "Brown Sugar" and has worked with John Legend, Maxwell, Mint Condition, Angie Stone, Mos Def and Gil Scott-Heron among many others.
He's the co-host of the Microphone Check podcast with Frannie Kelley.
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We spoke to the rapper, producer and head of Awful Records, while we were in Atlanta in May. Our onstage conversation was brief but covered a lot of ground fast.
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We went to Atlanta to talk to the three-man production team behind some of the greatest songs ever: Ray Murray, Rico Wade and Sleepy Brown.
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We put our legendary co-host in the hot seat and he spoke on how he evaluates music, how his faith influences his work ethic and how much he cares about getting credit. And that's just the first half.
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When we sat down with Iamsu, the Bay Area rapper had just as many questions for Ali Shaheed Muhammad as we had for him.
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The Texas rapper's experiences as, at once, a member of an all-girl posse, the only woman in the room and a person strangers underestimate are fundamental to her formidable style.
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"It's when you step out of the community that you get to look at it through a lens where you might be able to help," says the Queens rapper. "But then you're so far out of it, how do you get back in?"
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A writer and producer of Empire spoke to Microphone Check about which subplots on the TV show come from hip-hop history and the ways its central storyline is particularly American.
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Jean Grae is a rapper, a singer, a writer, a comedian and an actress. She doesn't run out of ideas. Her most recent album is called That's Not How You Do That: An Instructional Album For Adults.
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"This is the first thing that I've said that I fully stand behind," the 21-year-old rapper says of his new album. "I've never been this transparent with myself or with music."
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The pillar of New York's ASAP Mob speaks about his aesthetic choices, the way he imagines our far off future and what he's learned from Missy Elliott.