Ali Shaheed Muhammad
Ali Shaheed Muhammad is a world-renowned producer, songwriter and musician, and a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, Lucy Pearl and production group The Ummah. He cowrote D'Angelo's "Brown Sugar" and has worked with John Legend, Maxwell, Mint Condition, Angie Stone, Mos Def and Gil Scott-Heron among many others.
He's the co-host of the Microphone Check podcast with Frannie Kelley.
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Steinberg began managing Tupac Shakur in the late '80s and stepped away from that role in 1993. She didn't manage another musician for almost 20 years, until she started working with Earl Sweatshirt.
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"I made a promise to myself," says the Detroit rapper. "I would never ever not follow my heart again. That way if I rise or fall, sink or swim, it's by my own choice and my own decisions."
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The Rhode Island-born producer and DJ tells the story of the father/son talk he once had with Cam'ron, delineates EDM and hip-hop and calls out the whole music industry for being flaky.
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"Whatever I feel like is missing, or whatever type of track or energy I'm trying to feel or I feel like I'm not hearing in wherever music is at that period of time, I try to create it."
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"I want to get whatever's on my chest off my chest when it feels right," says the rapper, who makes songs that turn the personal into the political.
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"What really blowed my mind was the way it unified a room full of people," says the Miami rapper, about his earliest memories of hip-hop. "That's what we all have in common."
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He who signed De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Digital Underground sat down with his old friend Ali Shaheed Muhammad to tell stories about Tribe, ODB, Cypress Hill and everybody in between.
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The Atlanta rapper, actor and businessman spoke about being mentored by Andrew Young and using songwriting to talk to himself, as well as everybody else.
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"The best way to represent the places where you from is be yourself, completely," says the musician and actor.
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The Brooklyn rapper spoke to Microphone Check about the music business, the old neighborhood, the kids and a theoretical campaign to be Mayor of New York City.