Minnesota Now

A recent study by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health looks at obstetric care in all 50 states. It found a widespread loss in care for pregnant people that is disproportionately impacting rural communities.

The study’s lead author, Katy Backes Kozhimannil, joins MPR News host Nina Moini to dig into its findings. Kozhimannil is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and co-director of the Rural Health Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

The Minnesota-based footwear brand Minnetonka Moccasin has been around since 1946, but it made its mark in the shoe industry by appropriating Native footwear and designs.

Since issuing a public apology in 2021 for decades of profiting from Native culture, the company has been working to reconcile with Native American tribes. Their newest initiative is the Minnetonka Reclamation Collaborative, which brings together Native artists to redesign the company’s appropriated designs, create new products and reclaim cultural narratives. It launched at the beginning of the month.

For more, MPR News host Nina Moini talks with reconciliation advisor Adrienne Benjamin, who leads the effort and is a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Across the country, technology companies are searching for land to build large-scale data centers, or physical facilities that house the computers for cloud services and artificial intelligence. About 10 tech giants, such as Microsoft and Meta, have proposed data centers in Minnesota to support their growing AI networks.

The Minnesota Star Tribune has found that Google may also be looking for land to build a data center in Minnesota, according to emails obtained through a public records request.

For more, MPR News host Nina Moini talks with the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Walker Orenstein, who reported the story.

A heat advisory is in effect Wednesday from noon to the evening for the Twin Cities region and southern Minnesota. A serious heat wave has hit the state this week, with high humidity adding to the danger of hot temperatures.

MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner joins MPR News host Nina Moini to explain the forecast for the rest of the week.

Since first hitting the scene in 2018 with his pop culture-soaked musicality, Nur-D has stayed busy. His latest album, “Chunkadelic,” is his tenth full-length project in seven years. Ahead of its release, he stopped by Minnesota Public Radio to perform a few tracks and talk with MPR News arts reporter Jacob Aloi.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The whole project spins around this record, which was birthed out of a very mean comment on Reddit. 

A while back ago, we finally had a video go semi-viral on Reddit — me and the rest of the friendly neighborhood SpiderBand. We're all in tie dye. We're all having a good time, loving ourselves, enjoying the music we're making. You know, the internet can't have any of that. So this dude, somebody on the internet, typed in the comment section, “This looks like Chunkadelic.”

I was like, honestly, this is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.  It was supposed to be mean, but this is right. This is exactly who I am. But we sat on it for years. And then as we were getting together, making this record, I said to myself, “Chunkadelic”, and DJ Hayes was like, “Should we use that name now?” And it kind of just exploded to what it is now.

He's on half of the record as producer. “Chunkadelic” is homegrown, like we cooked that from the kitchen in our house, like we made it up.

It is a lot about finding joy in the face of adversity. Like, radical creativity under societal pressure to conform. One of the things that people ask me all the time is, “Oh, hey, like, why haven't you popped off?”

And it's like there is an entire complex, a ton of people who get paid to make sure that only certain types of people get into the positions of musical acceptance. People get to go to the show once they pay their dues and shave off the weird parts of themselves that make them unmarketable. And so for me, this record was kind of just my rejection of that as a concept.

The industry works great for some people, and that's awesome. What I found is like, the more I just hang out with the people that rock with me, the people who just want their music a little bit different, who are cool with me saying the things that I believe in out loud and unapologetically — they're gonna rock with me. 

So this record is kind of, like, I don't know — a butterfly moment out of a cocoon. Like, how far do I go into the industry? How far do I just lean into just making art, for art's sake? And the butterfly that came out of it was “Chunkadelic.” It was just like, “I'm gonna do me. I'm gonna be weird. I've decided that that's what I'm gonna do, if that is no longer in vogue, cool.” 

“Two Minutes and 30 Seconds,” I remember I had a professor when I was in music business school. I was going for a music business major, and he told me “two minutes and 30 seconds” — after that, you're losing them.

And there is this industry standard of clickbaity, repeatable, “let's get you on a TikTok sound,” and that's all you need. If you can just get a chorus, you're good, you know? And while I like that in certain accesses, because it allows for people to come up with cool, catchy stuff… I miss being rewarded for listening from track one all the way down to track 15, and you can feel the home-cooked meal-ness of a record. And so that's what I'm trying to do. 

I really wanted to take the time to not only listen to the funk genre, but also listen to the things that I enjoy… Anderson .Paak was one of the people I was listening to a lot. Because, while not specifically funk, his decision to be unique in his records was really, like, integral to me. 

Not only that, but George Clinton — obviously. “Funkadelic” is the main inspiration. “[Not Just] Knee Deep” was one of the first songs for me that I think really gripped me as a musician. And I didn't hear it on a record. I didn't hear it in concert — I heard it on “Good Burger.”

In the movie “Good Burger,” Kenan (Thompson) and Kel (Mitchell) end up in an insane asylum, and then in order to get out, there's a big dance number. And that dance number was to “Knee Deep, and George Clinton's in it; he's in the scene.

And I just remember thinking to myself as a kid, this is so much fun, like music can be like this. I would rewind that little orange VHS tape over and over and over again, just to wear that scene out. And so that's like, in me, it's always been in me. It's been there since I was a little kid. And so I'm excited to be able to finally let that come out. 

Being unapologetically happy about what you're doing is one of the biggest forms of resistance. I personally feel comedy — and laughter and joy — cuts through the fear that often is used to keep people in particular spaces.

If you're laughing, if you're enjoying yourself, if you're poking fun, it requires a lot more work from the opposition to stop you. Because people want to laugh, people want to have a good time. And so what I try to bring to my thing, this “Nur-D” thing is, like — I am entertainment. I'm not a distraction.

I'm the fiddler in the trenches. I am just as much a part of the war and the fight for what we need to do, as you guys are, people who are listening. But my job is to keep you motivated, to keep you having fun, thinking that tomorrow is worth it, and therefore, we will fight. It's comedy. It's fun. I make jokes. I'm gonna make a lot of them, but like, it's because… being sad is what they want. And I don't want to do that anymore. I want to just be happy.

I mean the powers that be… not to get too conspiracy theory about it, but there are people out there who have a vested interest in you buying what they're selling. And a lot of the time, they manufacture scarcity, they manufacture hurt so that you will buy the joy that they are selling: the temporary joy that they are selling. 

And for me, I'm like, no, let's bring some real joy, joy that comes from within, joy that can't be taken from you. And love for yourself, love for the things that make you happy. If you can operate in that, there is no force — business, political or otherwise — that can stop you. And then getting linked up with people that also agree with you? Now we're a super team. Now we can't be stopped. It's like Power Rangers up in here. 

I'd want to say, listen to it a thousand times a day, every day for the rest of your life, to help me pay rent! 

What I really want to say about the record is thank you to the Minnesota music community for kind of giving me proof of concept, sticking with me throughout all of these records, all of these projects.

10 projects within the seven-year span that I've been out, to have them all be so well received, is so awesome. I'm very lucky. I understand how blessed I am in that capacity. So with this 10th record, it is really a thank you to the scene.

A grocery store in St. Paul is closing, leaving 96 employees out of a job and nearby residents with fewer grocery options. We talked with a councilmember and a leader of a local group about efforts to fill vacant lots and revitalize the area.

The man charged in the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses could face the death penalty in his federal case. We got some context on how prosecutors and juries make capital punishment decisions.

We talked to a reporter who followed two Minneapolis eighth graders through their first year of school in the United States.

In the latest Wander and Wonder, we met a man fighting for honeybees.

Twin Cities rapper NUR-D is dropping a new album on Wednesday. We got a sneak peek.

Our Minnesota Music Minute was “Chunkadelic” by NUR-D and our Song of the Day was “Late Bloom” by Vicky Laske.

Federal prosecutors say it’s possible they will seek the death penalty in the case of Vance Boelter, the man charged with killing Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounding Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.

It’s been more than 100 years since Minnesota’s last state execution. The state abolished capital punishment in 1911. Federal prosecutors have not sought the death penalty in a Minnesota-based case since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Robin Maher joined MPR News host Nina Moini to talk about the possibility that Boelter will face the death penalty. Maher is the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Another grocery store is leaving St. Paul. Cub Foods in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood announced it will close on August 2. The closure will leave just one major grocer nearby, Target, though Aldi and other smaller ethnic grocery stores are in the neighborhood. It also follows the closure of nearby Lunds & Byerlys in downtown St. Paul.

The closing Cub Foods will leave an additional vacancy in a neighborhood that is working to revitalize.

Interim St. Paul city council member Matt Privratsky, who represents part of the Hamline-Midway area and Dawn Einwalter, president of the Hamline Midway Coalition joined Minnesota Now to talk about the future of business in the area.

In middle school, so much can change over the course of a single school year, or even a semester. A new story by Sahan Journal goes inside a Minneapolis classroom where students who recently moved to the United States are learning to navigate not just a new school but also a new country.

Education reporter Becky Dernbach followed two eighth-graders through their first few months of school, which coincided with President Trump’s return to the White House, a federal immigration crackdown – and heightened fears of deportation.

Dernbach joined Minnesota Now to talk about her reporting.

Democratic state Sen. Nicole Mitchell will resign her seat after she was found guilty on burglary charges late last week. Politics reporter Dana Ferguson will join us from the Capitol to explain how this could change the political balance of the legislature.

Democratic Socialist and state Sen. Omar Fateh won the Minneapolis DFL endorsement for Mayor. He's the first mayoral candidate to do so since 2009.

A new report finds that warming is accelerating in the Great Lakes region due to climate change.

And a north Minneapolis organization is moving into a larger space to help people keep their pets as costs rise.

Plus, the WNBA All-Star Game blurs the usual team rivalries. But the Minnesota Lynx took it by storm.

Our Minnesota Music Minute was “The Horse” by Products Band and our Song of the Day was “It’s U” by Rob Coates.