Rodney Carmichael

Rodney Carmichael is a storyteller, journalist and cultural critic, covering hip-hop at NPR Music since 2017. He often works at the intersection of race and inequality, telling stories across mediums that combine reporting and criticism to spotlight the sociopolitical significance of Black cultural production. As co-host/co-creator of NPR's first narrative music podcast, Louder Than A Riot, he and co-host Sidney Madden traced the collision of hip-hop and inequality across two seasons that respectively exposed how mass incarceration and misogynoir impact the culture. Louder's investigative reporting helped former No Limit rapper Mac Phipps gain clemency in 2021, after serving 21 years in prison for a murder he maintains he didn't commit. In 2024, Louder Than A Riot became the first podcast team to receive Journalist of the Year honors from the National Association of Black Journalists.

An alumnus of Poynter's News Writing and Reporting for College Graduates Fellowship, Carmichael's early journalism career featured staff-writing positions covering religion and public health at the Waco Tribune-Herald and Black pop culture at rolling out Urbanstyle Weekly. During his decade-long tenure at former Atlanta alt-weekly, Creative Loafing, he was an award-winning music editor, culture writer and senior writer. His most impactful stories use hip-hop as a lens to interrogate rhyme and punishment, gentrification and erasure, masculinity and Black identity.

He will be in residence at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute as the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year.