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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The producer and manager, who's worked with The Weeknd, Drake, Young Buck, Esthero and thestand4rd, is fighting the good fight. -
The West Coast legend, one of the main instigators of G-funk, has seen the underside of the industry. It's not pretty, but he stays smooth.
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The Compton rapper, who beat back the sophomore jinx with his new album Still Brazy, is questioning a world that barely ever makes sense. -
"I'm a manager. I am in the service industry. The service industry. I'm Midas f****** Muffler." -
She's the one behind the curtain of the biggest and best-loved rap and R&B songs in recent memory. -
"I don't want anybody to do exactly what I'm doing," says the Atlanta rapper. "I want people to look at why I'm doing what I'm doing. And if you agree with that, you go do what you do about it." -
"My job is only to be a servant of the community, and just to inspire. That's it. That's my whole job, and I know that." -
His songs make your brain briefly unbound and unwieldy. Same goes for this conversation. -
The artist and thinker, who just released a new album, takes us from the drummers of Burundi to Adam Ant, Octavia Butler to David Bowie, Rakim to Young Thug. -
Crown Heights came to North Hollywood so we could talk about crossed signals on the highways between artist and industry.
