Soundcheck

Composer, vocalist, director/choreographer, and auteur Meredith Monk performs music from her latest record, On Behalf of Nature.

Some things never change, and that's a good thing for the band American Football - even some 16-17 years later. Hear some of their songs of love gone wrong live in the studio. 

Raleigh, NC-based singer-songwriter Tift Merritt - who falls somewhere on the alt-country spectrum close to blues - performs songs from her 2017 record, Stitch of the World.  

Gabriel Garzón-Montano crafts hip-hop soul built on funk pillars. He joins us in the studio to perform songs from his debut, Jardín.  

Since 2009, the Ecuadorian-American singer and songwriter Roberto Lange has been making records under the name Helado Negro (that’s “black ice cream” in Spanish.) His music has been literally bilingual, in the sense that he sings in both Spanish and English, but it’s also been metaphorically bilingual, with its mix of art and pop. The newest Helado Negro album, Private Energy, also has some of the band’s most explicitly political material yet, responding to the Black Lives Matter movement and more. They’ll play some of those songs, live in the studio.

Here's "Young, Latin & Proud," in 360!: 

The Afro-Latina songstress has been compared to Alicia Keys, Selena, and Aaliyah and joins us to perform music from her deeply personal Mirrors Vol. 1 EP in the studio. 

The Q Brothers deliver the Shakespearean story of Othello, remixed into a one-act of friendship, jealousy, betrayal, murder, & suicide - swapping iambic pentameter for the funky fours of hip-hop rhythms.

In this re-imagining, MC Othello is the music mogul who rises to the top; Desdemona is the beautiful soul singer whose voice helped him achieve stardom. Then there’s MC Othello’s crew of Cassio, a “glitzy pop music rapper”; Iago, a hip-hop purist; and Rodrigo, a lighting designer on tour. Three of the four main characters, Postell Pringle (Othello), Jackson Doran (Cassio/Emilia), and GQ (Iago/Brabantio), join John Schaefer in the studio to perform their modern twist on this Shakespeare classic.

Los Angeles-born, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Angelica Garcia harnesses some country-blues twang, playing songs from her debut full-length, "Medicine for Birds," live, with her full band, in the studio. She taps into the magnolia trees, starry skies, and the ghosts of gothic Americana, written in her newfound isolation of a dusty old parish house in Accomac, Virginia.

The story of how Gangsta Rap came outta Compton, and took over America in the late 1980’s and early 1990s was the subject of the 2015 film “Straight Outta Compton.” But that’s not the whole story, according to journalist and author Ben Westhoff, whose book Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap is based on five years of research and reporting.

Westhoff chronicles NWA’s origins in the electro R&B-heavy outfit World Class Wreckin’ Crew, (who were rather Prince-derived; “Purple Ice” anyone?), to the anthemic, explosive, violent sounds of “F&*K the Police” and how N.W.A’s success led to rivalries among members and clashes between Eazy’s Ruthless Records and Suge Knight’s Death Row. Westhoff also traces how Tupac moved to the west coast and hooked up with Digital Underground, to the events that led to the East Coast / West Coast feud, and the murders of Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.  He’s also included original interviews with Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, Snoop Dogg, D.O.C., Mopreme Shakur, Ice-T, and many others.

Westhoff writes regularly on rap for The Guardian, and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vice, and The Wall Street Journal and joins John Schaefer for this podcast. 

Listen to Westhoff's accompanying playlist on Tidal.

Composer, vocalist, director/choreographer, and auteur Meredith Monk performs music from her latest record, On Behalf of Nature.