Microphone Check

Mannie Fresh, the legendary New Orleans producer and DJ, was our guest for the first live episode of Microphone Check. We taped at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. at the end of May, and the conversation was predictably warm, sharp and funny. Mannie regaled the crowd with stories about Cash Money Records, the making of Juvenile's 400 Degreez, Lil Wayne's career, Mantronix and his dad. And he played us a new song from what he's working on now: an album with Brooklyn rapper Mos Def.

What we didn't anticipate happened after we said our thank yous, when Mannie stood up, walked over to the decks and unleashed a spontaneous set of bounce remixes of everything from Hall & Oates to Earth Wind and Fire.

You can watch video of the evening here: http://www.npr.org/event/music/316698148/mannie-fresh-live-real-talk.

In the middle of our live interview with Mannie Fresh at NPR's headquarters in D.C. (http://www.npr.org/event/music/316698148/mannie-fresh-live-real-talk), Ali asked Mannie how he approaches DJing — does he play what he wants to hear? Or does he feed the crowd? "When I want you to understand something, I remix it," Mannie said. "If it's Earth Wind and Fire, and you not getting it, I'ma make you get it."

Laughing, and speaking for everyone in the room, Ali then asked if he could get a couple of those Mannie Fresh special remixes. "I got you!" said Mannie, and no one in the crowd let him forget it. After we had finished our conversation, and said our thank yous, he walked over to the decks. For the next 20 mins he put New Orleans behind songs by Kenny Chesney, Hall & Oates and Trouble Funk — leading off with his remix of "September," which somehow makes the warm embrace of Earth Wind and Fire's song even more cushy, homey and right on time.

Set List:

"September," Earth Wind and Fire

"Beat It," Michael Jackson

"Showtime at the Apollo Theme"

"Boogie Down Bronx," Man Parrish

"California Love," Tupac feat. Dr. Dre

"Let's Wait Awhile," Janet Jackson

"(Lay Your Head On My) Pillow," Tony Toni Tone

"Somewhere With You," Kenny Chesney

"One More Night," Maroon 5

"Funky Soul Makossa," Nairobi

"Billie Jean," Michael Jackson

"Back That Ass Up," Juvenile feat. Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne

"I Can't Go For That," Hall & Oates

"Good Life," Kanye West feat. T-Pain

"Friends," Whodini

"Trying Girls Out," The Persuaders (used by Kanye West for "Girls, Girls, Girls (Part 2)," Jay Z)

"That's How Long," The Chi-Lites (used by Just Blaze for "December 4th," Jay Z)

"A Dream," DeBarge (used by Daz for "I Ain't Mad At Cha," Tupac)

"Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City," Bobby "Blue" Bland (used by Kanye West for "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)," Jay Z)

"Sunrise," The Originals (used by Kanye West for "Guess Who's Back," Scarface feat. Jay Z, Beanie Sigel and Kanye West)

"Start This Off Right Tonight (Remix)," Trouble Funk

Since 2008 XXL Magazine has put out an annual issue highlighting new acts that the editors predict will go on to impact hip-hop — the music and the industry. In the beginning, the 10 musicians chosen for the cover of that issue were called the Leaders of the New School. Over the years the people who land what's now called the Freshmen cover — as well as the people who didn't, not to mention the people who turned it down — have become the topic of conversation all over the place, including in song.

The debates and turf wars that the Freshmen issue manifests — What are the effects of music journalism's current turbulent epoch on the prospects of musicians themselves? What is the role of the New York City-based music business in a now worldwide culture and industry? What does it take to make it? — are felt and grappled with by the people who make the issue at every step of their process.

For their perspective, Microphone Check co-hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley sat down with Vanessa Satten, the editor in chief of XXL who's been with the magazine since 1998, and senior editor Dan Rys, who's been there 11 months, making this his first Freshmen cover.

Freddie Gibbs moved away from his hometown of Gary, Indiana, more than 10 years ago. He went to L.A., where he became friends with Madlib, the producer revered for his work in The Lootpack, as a solo artist under the name Quasimoto, for that time Blue Note Records let him do whatever he wanted in their vault and the albums he's made collaboratively, with heavyweights J Dilla, MF Doom, Percee P and Talib Kweli.

Gibbs and Microphone Check cohost Ali Shaheed Muhammad are quite certain that Piñata, the album Madlib has made with Gibbs, is the most gangster project Madlib has ever worked on. He couldn't join us in the studio, but Gibbs sat down to talk about what he calls his "homiefied" album.

The rise of the rapper, singer and songwriter given the name Future when he was a teenager being fostered by the legendary Dungeon Family looks meteoric from the outside. In reality, the musician has reinvented himself a couple times, pored over his predecessors' work and, he says, recorded more than 10 albums worth of songs.

He spoke to Microphone Check about working with Andre 3000, the politics of features and the studio life.

On April 19, 1994, Columbia Records released the debut album of a 20-year-old from Queensbridge Houses in New York City. It was deft, wise, deadly serious and matched the babyface with unparalleled promise to beats made by the era's preeminent producers.

Two decades after Illmatic, Nas sat down with Microphone Check for a conversation that moved from his love for Ali Shaheed Muhammad's group, A Tribe Called Quest, to music journalism ("If you're Sade, it doesn't matter. She does what she does. But for all of us, journalism is a huge deal.") hearing himself on the radio for the first time and his audience:

"My surroundings. The hip-hop community also," says Nas. "So that meant I made it for other rappers, I made it for other MCs, I made it for other hip-hop groups. I made it for artists, singers, people in the arts — that's who I made it for. But it comes from the street, so my surroundings wrote that album. I made it for them."

E-40, from Northern California, is widely known for creating slang, flouting the rules and knowing everybody from everywhere. 40 spoke with Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley about Lil Jon, T-Pain, Tupac and Too Short. They started their conversation talking business and in particular, the model that 40 provided New Orleans' own Master P when No Limit Records was just a twinkle in his eye.

The Los Angeles rapper has lived a lot of life in his 27 years. "I call myself All-American," he says. "I done been an athlete, a gang member, drug dealer. I done been a kid that was kind of living on the fortunate side when my mama was starting to do good, and I was hustling just to hustle because, dude, my homies was doing it, you get what I'm saying? But then I ended up actually really needing to hustle. And out of all that s--- I done did, I had a job — worked a job for two years. I worked at the railroad. Go to jail, get a strike. All this s--- happened before I was even 21." And then he started rapping.

ScHoolboy Q has released two mixtapes and, just this week, his major label debut — but he says he's got two more albums all planned out. As a part of Top Dawg Entertainment, the company that gave rise to critical phenom Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q has played the role of the hard-boiled cut up. With Oxymoron, he says he wanted to make "a gangster rap L.A. dark album from a good student's point of view." When we sat down with him, the night before he performed brand new songs from the album, he spoke thoughtfully about addiction (his own and his uncle's), why he used to think rappers were fake and how he grew up.

This week, NPR Music is launching an R&B channel called "I'll Take You There," hosted by Jason King, a professor, writer and musician. It's a lot like the 24/7 stream of hip-hop that Ali and I host. So for this episode of Microphone Check, we're adding some R&B to the mix and talking to Solange Knowles.

We start our conversation in hip-hop: Solange tells us about getting suspended in middle school over a Nas poster in her locker, compares her singing style to Silkk the Shocker's flow, and says she still can't believe she got Bun B and Mannie Fresh to dance in the video for her song "Lovers in the Parking Lot."

This fall, Solange started a label called Saint Records — what she calls a "passion project" that will primarily house R&B artists. We talk about her hopes for the label, the relevance of gospel to R&B, recent journalism around the genre and, of course, Lucy Pearl. You can get all of NPR's coverage of R&B on Twitter @NPRandB.

Four or five years ago Microphone Check co-host Ali Shaheed Muhammad told Danny Brown that he's the hip-hop Richard Pryor. "And I got it, too: making things funny that don't supposed to be funny," says Brown. "It's like putting the pill in the pudding."

Since then Brown has released three albums under his own name (with October's Old being the most recent), fully infiltrated the festival circuit, and become both a regular fixture on critics Best Of lists and a character in GrandTheft Auto V. He spoke to Muhammad and co-host Frannie Kelley about his grandmothers, reading bad reviews and what he would do with $100,000.