Microphone Check

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 http://www.npr.org/sections/microphonecheck/2015/07/29/424717271/large-professor-part-1-were-living-in-the-world-of-hip-hop. Part two covers the making of Illmatic, Paul C's role and Ali's favorite Extra P lines.

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.

We spoke to Father, the rapper, producer and head of Awful Records, the breeding ground for iLoveMakonnen and Archibald SLIM and Slug Christ and Ethereal and Richposlim, while we were in Atlanta in May. Our onstage conversation was brief — Father was kind of the opener for our interview with Organized Noize — but covered a lot of ground fast.

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 than you. And no one wants to feel like anyone else is better than them. So we established fear." Who Vince means by "they" changes over the course of this interview, but throughout he acknowledges his complicity in a rigged system while laying the blame for its perpetuation at our own lazy, fearful feet.

"I saw that all of it was fake, from the streets to music to the government to my own family to my parents to — all of it was not real," he says. "Look where I come from. Everyone's pretending they're not sad."

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 (https://soundcloud.com/npr-microphone-check/ali-shaheed-muhammad). Part two alternates between light-hearted and heavy, and though it was taped in May, it is painfully relevant in the wake of nine deaths in Charleston and the continuing terrorization of black people.

On May 18th Microphone Check went to Atlanta to interview the three-man production team behind some of the greatest songs ever: every one on Outkast's Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, every one on Goodie Mob's Soul Food, TLC's "Waterfalls," En Vogue's "Don't Let Go," deep cuts and big hits everywhere. The people who came out to join the conversation and express their gratitude to Organized Noize included much of the Dungeon Family — Big Boi, Backbone and Mr. DJ got on mic, and Big Rube took Ray Murray's place on stage when Ray had to go celebrate his daughter's graduation from high school — and the whole room felt aligned and together and giddy. Ali said he was geeked, Frannie had the best time. We'll all do it again soon.

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.

The following should not be construed as legal advice — just good advice. We asked Julian Petty, who represents Ali, Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples and the estate of Biggie Smalls — and at one time worked with Michael Jackson, Prince and Stevie Wonder — to come see us at Microphone Check as part of our continued effort to put ever more people on game.

"People get got most commonly because of time pressure," he says. "They're very excited. This is their dream. And someone just pushes a document in front of them and is like, 'Hey, man. We gotta close this. We gotta knock this out now. We're supposed to be shooting a video next week.' And it's really that pressure, this person thinking, 'My dream is on this piece of paper.'"

When we sat down with Iamsu, the Bay Area rapper had just as many questions for Ali as we had for him. The three of us spoke about not putting anybody on a pedestal and what would happen if more people in hip-hop brought their moms to the situation.

Amber London made the trip from Houston to Austin to perform her first official shows at SXSW, which provided the perfect occasion for an interview long in the making. We tried to not get stuck on the topic of life as a female rapper, but London's experiences as, at once, a member of an all-girl posse in search of songs hard enough for them, the only woman in the room (or studio or bus) and a person strangers underestimate, turn out to be fundamental to her style.

"My stage presence is so aggressive because I like the feeling of being an underdog," she says. "I like that it might be one person that give me that look like, 'What is she about to do?' That's who I'm speaking to when I get on stage. I like to prove people like — girls — no matter what I look like, it's all about the music, and I'ma show you how to really rap. I'ma show you how it's done."