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NPR Music’s Louder Than A Riot returns for the podcast’s second season on Thursday. This season follows hosts Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael as they detangle the longstanding history of misogyny, homophobia and marginalization within hip-hop.
Each of the ten episodes tells the stories of influential hip-hop figures, including Trina, Latto, DreamDoll, Saucy Santana, iLoveMakonnen, Rico Nasty, journalist Kim Osorio, and activist Tarana Burke. Louder Than A Riot will also feature original reporting from the trial that found Tory Lanez guilty of assaulting Megan Thee Stallion.
“Hip-hop is in a paradigm-shifting moment right now. Fifty years in, Black women and femmes are running the rap game,” Sidney Madden says. “But this is happening at the same time that we are being assaulted, ridiculed, discriminated against in new ways everyday. Season 2 of Louder Than A Riot is all about unspooling that contradiction and facing the ugly parts of the culture we love head-on.”
“It’s no coincidence that the loudest rebels in rap today are the artists the culture’s loved on the least,” says Rodney Carmichael. “Now, they’re causing riots and carrying the genre on their back. This season is all about celebrating that – but it’s also about interrogating why Black women and queer artists have had to fight so hard to be heard in the first place.”