Microphone Check

This week, in honor of Black History Month, we went down to NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to screen Sam Greenlee's 1973 film The Spook Who Sat by the Door and host a conversation about its resonance.

In case you're not familiar with the cult classic, the main character is Dan Freeman, who's trained by the CIA to be its first black agent. After he masters the agency's tactics, he goes home to the southside of Chicago on a mission to train street gangs to be "Freedom Fighters." When a young man is shot dead by the police, Freeman's trainees spring into action. What happens in the end is open to interpretation, as you'll hear at the start of this recording of our panel discussion.

The members of our panel are Dr. Greg Carr, Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University, Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor at Ebony Magazine, and K. Nyerere Ture, Professor of Anthropology at Morgan State University.

The panel and the audience discussed the film's themes of resistance and intra-racial tension as well as the erasure of the Black Arts movement from mainstream discussion of black history. "The villain of the film," said Dr. Carr, "is the idea of the nation-state."

Special thanks: Erin McIntyre, Dennis Herndon, Keith Woods, Darlene Barkley, Justin Lucas, Brittany Brown, Neil Tevault, Bobby Carter, Eleanor Kagan, Morgan McCloy, Joe Hagen and Anya Grundmann.

Last year you heard Terrace Martin's work on YG's album, Ninth Wonder's compilation, Big K.R.I.T.'s Cadillactica and, just this week, a new song by Kendrick Lamar, called "The Blacker The Berry." In the space of less than six months in 2014, the LA-based producer and multi-instrumentalist also put out a full solo album, 3ChordFold Pulse, and a Christmas project called Times.

When Martin spoke to Microphone Check he teased us about that Kendrick album, professed his love for A Tribe Called Quest and told us why he makes "relationship songs."

"I grew up on Crenshaw and Slauson and I grew up in the crack era and the gangbanging was really heavy in South Central," he says. "I never want, like, using my platform to talk about the same story and what's going — that s--- gives me anxiety, thinking about that era or that time. You know what I mean? Even with times going on now, it's like, the best thing I could do is really not comment and just keep on feeding the world good music. That's what I'm here for. Like the Titanic, when them motherf---ers went down with the ship, trying to make everybody else cool, that's all I'ma do."

After 24 years in the music business, the producer and rapper from Compton, Calif., knows what's going on. He told Microphone Check studio secrets, a Rick James story, and all about the funk.

"You gotta get funky to make records that give people the frown face when they hear it," he says. "You know, George Clinton-style. That's what George and them used to do. George and them didn't bathe. So I started doing that. ... It's a different attitude when you go in the studio all fastidious and clean. You don't want to get down. Like, 'Hey. Look at my watch. My shoes are white. I'm not gon' party.' You know what I mean? 'I ain't finna write no song. I'm finna take some pictures of me.' You know, that's them days. But we was in there getting stinky. And it got on the music."

The Rhode Island-born producer and DJ — the MVP of the MPC — tells Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley the story of the father/son talk he once had with Cam'ron, delineates EDM and hip-hop (one is more like private school than the other) and calls out the whole music industry for being flaky.

Back in October, Detroit's Black Milk released his sixth solo album, called If There's A Hell Below. He came to New York and spoke with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley about trying to impress J Dilla, transforming his music for live shows and always improving. "Each song, I want it to have a purpose," he says. "I feel like I'm making some of the best music. I know it's certain details that I'm looking at, that I know I've grown in, that most people won't even hear."

The day after his third album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, was released, J. Cole spoke to Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley. It was the morning before he performed "Be Free," the song he made about Michael Brown, on Letterman. Cole said he was nervous about it, but apparently not so worried that he would change his clothes. He wore the same hoodie for this interview that he did on TV. The conversation –- Mic Check's second with Cole — reveals a person newly comfortable with himself, his abilities and what needs to be done.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley sat down in Los Angeles with Rick Ross. First things first, they talked about food, but quickly got into the Miami musician's early rap fandom, the importance of imagery in his work and what his mentors taught him about running a team.

Killer Mike and El-P, underground kings from Atlanta and New York respectively, met four years ago, made an album together, and then joined forces under the name Run the Jewels, something far beyond the sum of its parts. "We're a group comprised of two dudes who met at crossroads, who had come out of crossroads deciding to go out and hunt and kill," says El-P, who produces as well as raps. "When we met, we had both individually decided we were going to go for ours. Like, no more playing around."

Microphone Check co-host Ali Shaheed Muhammad was moving on the only morning Jaime and Mike had time to sit down in New York City after they dropped their second album, Run the Jewels 2, so this interview was done by Frannie Kelley solo.

Dante Ross, A&R man extraordinaire, keeper of stories about everyone from ODB to De La Soul to Cypress Hill, the Beastie Boys, Queen Latifah and Pete Rock, sat down with Microphone Check to remember the old days and stare down the present.

"I want to be here because the people put me here," says the Atlanta rapper, actor and businessman. T.I. spoke to Microphone Check about being mentored by Andrew Young, taking Biggie to Atlanta and Outkast to NYC, using songwriting to talk to himself, as well as everybody else, and the death of his protege, Doe B.