Louder Than A RiotStories of rhyme and punishment that illuminate the long, interconnected rise of two American institutions: hip-hop and mass incarceration.
Rapper Noname and activist and organizer Mariame Kaba joined Louder Than A Riot to discuss hip-hop's role in a prison-free future.
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images and Giancarlo Valentine
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Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images and Giancarlo Valentine
Nipsey Hussle is part of a mural painted by Moses Ball featuring other local notable people on the wall of a bank in the rapper's Hyde Park neighborhood. In the wake of Hussle's March 2019 death, many murals of the beloved Los Angeles musician were painted in the Hyde Park neighborhood near his Marathon Clothing store.
Tara Pixley for NPR
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Mary Baxter, aka Isis Tha Saviour, is a Philadelphia-based rapper and artist who draws on her personal experience of incarceration in her art.
Destiny Moore for NPR
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Bobby Shmurda at BET's year-end special 106 & Party on Dec. 12, 2014 in New York City. Just days later, the rapper and his entourage would be arrested in an NYPD raid.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for BET
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In the early 2000s, DJ Drama's mixtapes launched artists' careers and defined a new sound. But when mixtapes became a scapegoat for the music industry's collapse, Drama took the fall.
Richard Ecclestone / Redferns
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Before he was a teenager, Mac Phipps already had a record deal. By the time he was 20 he was signed to No Limit Records, the biggest independent label in the country. At 24, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 30 years in prison following the shooting death of a man at one of his concerts, a crime of which he maintains he did not commit.
Sheila Phipps
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