Ali Shaheed Muhammad

The producer and manager, who's worked with The Weeknd, Drake, Young Buck, Esthero and thestand4rd, is fighting the good fight.

The West Coast legend, one of the main instigators of G-funk, has seen the underside of the industry. It's not pretty, but he stays smooth.

The Compton rapper, who beat back the sophomore jinx with his new album Still Brazy, is questioning a world that barely ever makes sense.

Our producer, David Luke, father of David Luke III, put together this podcast, in which past guests like Danny Brown, Solange Knowles and T.I spoke about fatherhood and father figures. It's OK to cry.

"I'm a manager. I am in the service industry. The service industry. I'm Midas f****** Muffler."

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 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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

This is the second special edition of Microphone Check, the back half of an interview that put one of our hosts in the hot seat. You can listen to and read part one here. Part two alternates between light-hearted and heavy, and though it was taped in May, ...