John Schaefer, Soundcheck

WNYC's Julianne Welby talks with John Schaefer, host of WNYC's Soundcheck, about the show's legacy.

What really happened "the day the music died"? The lyrics to “American Pie” were sold on Tuesday for over $1 million—and those lyrics could unlock the code to the song’s true meaning.

John Schaefer, host of WNYC's "Soundcheck" and "New Sounds," reviews Glen Campbell's final recording.

Our Movie Date team has given us their predictions in the big categories for Oscar night, but there's another smaller category that's getting a lot of buzz this year: The original son...

All this week, the music program Soundcheck is looking back on the music of 1993—including chart topping singles, landmark albums and watershed moments from that summer 20 years ago. ...

WNYC's Soundcheck presented Brooklyn-based rapper Talib Kweli live in The Greene Space on April 24. Kweli previewed new music from his fifth album, Prisoner of Conscious, coming out this May.

Host John Schaefer asked Kweli about the album's title and the term "conscious hip hop." The title, Kweli said, doesn't refer to his own sense of confinement, but to people's perception of him as an artist.

"When I first started, you just did hip hop," Kweli said. "It wasn't like, okay De La Soul, that's conscious rap and N.W.A is gangster rap. It was like, this is just hip hop. ...People who are very passionate about music like to break music down into sub genres."

On his new album, he challenged himself to go more upbeat and focus on the musicality. "I can't lose focus of my job as an entertainer by making my stuff overtly conscious," Kweli said. "It has to sound good and feel good first." 

After a summer-long hiatus, Soundcheck relaunches this month with a new 1-hour radio broadcast every weeknight, an exclusive from one of New York’s hottest bands – and a new digital home, Soundcheck.org
 
On Sept. 10 at 2 p.m., the acclaimed New York indie band ...