Rodney Carmichael
Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. An Atlanta-bred cultural critic, he helped document the city's rise as rap's reigning capital for a decade while serving on staff as music editor, culture writer and senior writer for the defunct alt-weekly Creative Loafing.
During his tenure there, he won several Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards for column writing, longform storytelling, special projects, investigative and feature reporting on gender and economic inequality issues ranging from strip club class-action lawsuits to harm reduction needle exchange programs. "Straight Outta Stankonia" — a cover-to-cover look at Atlanta's gentrifying cultural landscape through the lens of OutKast, which he conceived and co-wrote — was honored as one of the Atlanta Press Club's Top 10 Favorite Stories of the Past 50 Years in 2014.
A Georgia State University alum (journalism/playwriting) and former Poynter Fellow for Young Journalists, Carmichael started his career in Waco, Texas, where he received a Cox Rookie of the Year nomination for his enterprise reporting and feature writing on religion, health and social services at the Waco Tribune-Herald. Even then, race and culture lay at the heart of his coverage.
Back in Atlanta, a three-year stint at the urban lifestyle weekly rolling out deepened his commitment to cultural reporting. After covering red carpets (BET Awards, MTV VMAs), profiling Black business leaders and penning cover stories on artists ranging from Ciara to Andre 3000, his passion for storytelling led him to the alt-weekly world. During his first five years at Creative Loafing (Atlanta), he led local music coverage as music editor of the alternative weekly with the third-highest readership in the nation. During the next half-decade, Carmichael dug deeper by covering his hometown from the underground up. As it underwent cultural upheaval and shifting socioeconomics, he used Atlanta's creative economy — expanding from music, film, TV and tech — as a lens to explore the city's oft-competing identities: New South gateway, human rights hub, Black Hollywood, strip club capital and hip-hop hotbed.
Now, covering hip-hop from a national perspective at NPR, he continues to work at the intersection of race and culture. The stories he tells combine reporting and criticism to focus on black cultural production and all its sociopolitical implications. As creator and co-host of the podcast Louder Than A Riot, he and co-host Sidney Madden trace the collision and interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration in America.
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Few music icons have consistently pulled magic — or unpredictable pivots — out the hat like André 3000. 7 piano sketches, his newly released surprise EP, follows up the instrumental turn he took on 2023's New Blue Sun with another non-rap project. -
Record-breaking mainstream hits. A new generation of artists rising to seize their moment. Rappers in and out of courts. A pair of the biggest names in the game transforming their careers by taking their rivalry to sometimes bitter new heights. In 2024, hip-hop brought us wave upon wave of massive, surprising, culture-shifting moments. NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce, Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael were watching and listening all year long, and they've gathered together to explain the most important stories of hip-hop's 51st year. There was the ascendance of new dominant voices in Southern rap, many of them female, along with the noticeable resonance, for many artists in the genre, with country music. The disconcerting trial of Young Thug left a void in Atlanta — the longtime hip-hop capital — for much of the year, before it ended suddenly and dramatically. And yes, there was the remarkable show put on by Kendrick Lamar in his sustained attack on Drake. Plus: Rodney, Sidney and Sheldon share their favorite hip-hop albums of the year. Hip-hop may have celebrated its landmark 50th anniversary in 2023 by looking back at its own history, but in 2024, it shot forward like a cannon blast. -
The trials for rappers Young Thug and Lil Durk have dominated headlines and while the cases are different, lyrics being used against them in the courtroom is the commonality.
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Without any advance warning, Kendrick Lamar released a new album called GNX. Rodney Carmichael has been following all year and shares his impressions.
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The Atlanta rapper, who was charged with participating in criminal gang activity in what has become the longest criminal trial in Georgia history, suddenly changed his plea on Thursday. -
Kendrick Lamar will be the halftime show entertainment for 2025's Super Bowl. An artist who made his biggest headlines this year by dicing into conflict, not everyone is happy that he landed the gig.
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The Atlanta hip-hop star Rich Homie Quan rose to fame nationally in 2013 with his first hit single "Type of Way" and had a short but intense burst of success. He died Thursday. -
On his latest album, the Atlanta rapper, who swept the hip-hop prizes at this year's Grammys, continues to turn personal turmoil into testimony. -
In a new interview, Questlove reveals why Drake vs. Kendrick was so triggering, how he regained his passion for hip-hop and what to expect from the new Roots album. -
In his first solo outing, the rapper breaks free of the stifling expectations set by the experimental music of his group in pursuit of a pure love of rapping.
