Ali Shaheed Muhammad

Ali Shaheed Muhammad appears in the following:

What We Talked About When We Talked About Hip-Hop In 2013

Friday, December 06, 2013

We all listen to music differently. What we hear is shaded by our history, our knowledge, our equipment, our mood, our taste. But every year there are moments when everybody who lives and breathes hip-hop is talking about the same thing.

In June, when Jay's Samsung/Magna Carta Holy ...

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Eight Million Stories: Hip-Hop In 1993

Monday, November 11, 2013

All year Morning Edition and NPR Music have been running radio pieces about rap albums released 20 years ago, in 1993. For a special episode of Microphone Check we invited a group of people who were working in hip-hop back then to meet us at the

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Marley Marl On The Bridge Wars, LL Cool J And Discovering Sampling

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Marley Marl is one of the most important people in hip-hop history. He's the one who figured out how to sample — how to get pieces of songs off vinyl records and into a drum machine. More than 30 years later, and 25 years after his first album, 1988's In ...

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Goodie Mob On Hip-Hop Made By And For Adults

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Goodie Mob is a quartet from Atlanta, Georgia, that debuted in 1995, when New York and Los Angeles dominated rap. The group came out of The Dungeon Family, a loose collective of musicians including OutKast and Organized Noize that favors humid production and heady subject matter relayed with flair. Their ...

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Prodigy On Mobb Deep's Early Days And Protecting His Success

Monday, July 08, 2013

Prodigy began his career as one half of New York hardcore duo Mobb Deep more than 20 years ago. He and rapper-producer Havoc made classic songs like "Shook Ones Part II," "Survival of the Fittest" and "Quiet Storm." Since then Prodigy has worked with ...

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Mike Dean On Working With Selena, Scarface And Kanye

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Producer and engineer Mike Dean has worked with everyone from Kurupt to Devin the Dude, Selena to Z-Ro, Young Jeezy to UGK. In the early 1990s, he helped create the sound of Rap-A-Lot Records and the bones of Dirty South rap.

In 2002, while working on Scarface's The ...

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J. Cole On Competition And Writing Honest Songs

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Rapper and producer J. Cole put out his second major label album, Born Sinner, this week, on the same day Kanye West officially released Yeezus. Both albums leaked before their street dates, and both were the subject of rapid-response reviews. Cole spoke to Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed ...

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Statik Selektah On Boom Bap And His Mom's Favorite Rapper

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Statik Selektah, the producer who's made collaborative albums with Action Bronson, Freddie Gibbs and Saigon and DJ who's spun for Q-Tip, Nas and Joey Bada$$, put out his fifth solo project this month. Except it's not really solo. Three dozen rappers recorded verses for his tracks and the result, called ...

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