Louder Than A Riot

The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

In this first episode, a mysterious conspiracy letter sends us on a journey to find out just how entangled hip-hop and mass incarceration have become over the last 40 years. We travel back in time to 1980s Atlanta with Killer Mike, 1990s Oakland with Too Short and beyond. From Reagan's war on drugs to a secret NYPD dossier of the world's biggest rappers, it's all connected — and, as Killer Mike says, "The proof's in the pudding."

Hip-hop emerged from the voices of the unheard. But freedom doesn't ring the same for everyone. Inside all corners of the culture, Black women and queer folk have dealt with the same oppression the music was built to escape. Season 2 of Louder Than A Riot examines who hip-hop marginalizes, and how misogynoir — the specific racist misogyny against Black women — is embedded into the fabric of the culture that we love.<br/><br/>From Rico Nasty facing harassment from toxic fans, to Saucy Santana's unapologetically femme aesthetics in a queerphobic industry, to the assault case that put Megan Thee Stallion's image on trial, each episode of Louder Than A Riot unpacks the unspoken rules of rap that discriminate against a select few and have held the entire culture back. <br/><br/>Hosted by NPR Music's Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael, Louder Than A Riot confronts power from every angle – from the power the genre wields over its artists, to the power plays that its rulebreakers take in order to get heard. In the midst of a so-called Renaissance for women in rap, these stories reveal a rot at the core of the culture that reflects how voices, bodies, and rights are still policed in America.