Bono and The Edge play the Tiny Desk; ‘Louder Than A Riot’ returns

Season 2 explores how the double standard became hip-hop's standard

View this email online March 18, 2023 by Marissa Lorusso This week, Louder Than A Riot returns for a new season about the challenges Black women and queer people face in hip-hop; plus, a Tiny Desk from Bono and The Edge. Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR “Every culture has its norms,” write my colleagues Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael, “and hip-hop is no exception.” Sidney and Rodney host the NPR Music podcast Louder Than A Riot, which returned this week for its second season. Sidney and Rodney have been thinking a lot about hip-hop’s unspoken rules lately. And the way they see it, many of those rules don’t apply the same to everyone. Many of those rules — about how to look, how to sound, who your audience is, what kind of harassment you should be willing to accept or how much respect you can (or can’t) demand — only apply to women and queer artists. It’s a paradox: While hip-hop has always been a place where marginalized voices can speak back to oppression and interrogate social inequity, that doesn’t mean that hip-hop can’t also be a place where some of those inequalities are replicated.  And that felt especially clear to the Louder team this past winter, when they covered the trial of Tory Lanez for shooting Megan Thee Stallion. Meg is one of the biggest rappers in the world, part of a new wave of women innovating in the genre and dominating the charts. But when she spoke up about the shooting, she was subject to disbelief, disregard and disrespect from many hip-hop fans. It was a perfect, disturbing example, Sidney and Rodney explain, of misogynoir: the sexist prejudice that Black women, and people read as Black women, face. Even though Meg’s truth-telling culminated in a guilty verdict for Tory Lanez, the fallout proved she had challenged one of hip-hop’s unspoken rules: Being exceptional doesn't make you the exception. Sidney and Rodney, plus senior producer Gabby Bulgarelli, dive into that story in the first episode of the season: what happened during the trial, how it reflects rap’s history of misogynoir and how it felt to see that prejudice confronted — and embodied —  in the courtroom. In each of this season’s episodes, the Louder Than A Riot team will be unpacking another unspoken rule and telling the stories of Black women and queer rappers who have opposed them. “It's a season about every person in this industry who has felt misogynoir come for them,” Sidney explains in that first episode, “those who have been brushed aside, told to change or just shut up; those who haven't been believed or have been held back by all the unspoken rules of rap.”  This season of Louder Than A Riot isn’t an indictment of hip-hop culture — it’s a much needed audit, from the perspective of lifelong fans and committed hip-hop journalists, of where the community is failing its most marginalized members and what it will take to repair that damage. It’s also a chance to, as the hosts put it, “celebrate the rulebreakers who refuse to play nice.” Fifty years into hip-hop’s history, they say, it’s time “to give those unwritten rules names that speak the truth of their cruelty, so we can begin to erase them.” Newsletter continues after sponsor message More to read, watch and hear What do Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," Black Sabbath’s "War Pigs" and Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey" all have in common? They’re all songs T-Pain has covered on his new collection On Top of the Covers. Hear a conversation about that surprisingly wide-ranging release, plus more of the best new albums out March 17, on this week’s New Music Friday from All Songs Considered. Now that De La Soul’s discography is (finally!) available on streaming, my colleague Sheldon Pearce sat down with two De La Soul experts — author and professor Oliver Wang and writer Matthew Ritchie — for an All Songs Considered conversation about listening anew to the group’s storied catalog in 2023.  "I'm not an artist," Puerto Rican artist Villano Antillano brags toward the end of the first track of her debut album. "I'm a movement." After ascending in Puerto Rico’s underground rap scene, Antillano collaborated with other up-and-coming queer and women artists and spent nearly three years working on La Sustancia X. Now, her first full-length record is a chance to make a statement fully on her own; as a trans woman, she says much of the album is a testament to the way she's been able to interact with her femininity through her creative process. When we talked about Tianna Esperanza's debut record, Terror, on All Songs Considered a couple weeks ago, my colleague Ann Powers described the record as "masterful." Esperanza recently spoke to Morning Edition’s Leila Fadel about finding her creative voice, crafting that impressive record and collaborating with singer-songwriter Valerie June. As Fever Ray, the Swedish musician Karin Dreijer has used experimental pop music to explore some complicated and marginalized sides of love. Last week, I wrote a review of their new record, Radical Romantics, where Dreijer looks at love even more broadly, positioning it as not a destination but an ongoing process of courage, vulnerability and experimentation. Tiny Desk Estefania Mitre/NPR Though we always love when the Tiny Desk gets to introduce you to your new favorite up-and-coming artist, it’s hard not to be especially excited when huge stars stop by Bob Boilen’s desk. What impressed my colleague Robin Hilton so much about the recent visit from Bono and The Edge was just how little ego — and how much kindness and good-natured humor — the U2 icons brought to the Tiny Desk. (Robin says Bono poked fun at himself by saying “The talent’s here! The talent’s coming through” when he first arrived.) Their performance featured several reimagined versions of songs from All That You Can’t Leave Behind, including “Beautiful Day” and “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.” Also this week: Singer-songwriter Andrew Combs performed a set of penetrating new tunes, capped with a breathtaking love song. One More Thing The key to EGOT-ing with John Legend. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? 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