Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael are journalists at NPR, but they could be rap history professors. And they have a thesis: emo rap is not a new phenomenon. They say it’s always been a part of the culture. In fact, they think that a lot of the all-time greats, like Jay Z and Biggie and Scarface, were writing emo raps long before the genre went mainstream. On this episode, we go back to the roots of emo and really get in our feelings.

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