Object Of Sound

Just in time for the final weeks of March Madness, we’re bringing two of our favorite things together – music and basketball. Hanif heads to a Cleveland Cavaliers v. Detroit Pistons game to take in t…

“I'm just so fascinated by the voice,” says Taja Cheek, the experimentalist and multi-instrumentalist behind L’Rain. “It feels so scary to me, but that's also what kind of draws me closer to it to tr…

“Soundtracks are the unsung heroes of film.” That’s the premise of this special episode of Object of Sound, recorded live at On Air Fest 2022. Hanif and New York Times critic at large Wesley Morris t…

“The journey to self-love is not quick, or easy, or ever over,” says musician Allison Russell, whose solo album Outside Child was released to widespread acclaim last year. In this episode, Allison an…

“For a very long time, people knew of techno as a genre, but never placed it in Detroit,” says writer and cultural producer Imani Mixon. In this episode, we’re digging deep into the origins of that D…

Welcome back to Object of Sound. In the debut episode of our third season, we’re talking about the power of music to heal, inspire, and invite magic into our lives. “When we sing, we are deathless” s…

Welcome to our first ever holiday special, ‘Christmas At Home with Hanif Abdurraqib’ an hour long deep dive into the world of Christmas Music. Whether you’re flooded with warm nostalgia at the first …

“Collaboration—that's the easiest way to grow” says Aaron Dessner, member of the National and Big Red Machine, and a prolific collaborator with artists from Taylor Swift to Kanye West. In our final e…

It’s been 20 years since Aaliyah’s passing, and for most of those years, her music has been largely inaccessible. Kept off streaming platforms, hidden from the internet. That is, until now. With near…

What do you do when you revisit a beloved movie from your childhood, only to find out it's not quite what you remember? If you’re Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, you write a song about it. Th…

 “What about the Black woman who does not care to save you?” asks Adia Victoria. “How about the Black woman who is trying to look after her own skin, because you're not looking out for her?” Adia’s f…

DJ Screw changed hip hop forever. You’ve heard his signature sound, even if you don’t know his name. On this episode, co-hosted by Mogul’s Brandon ‘Jinx’ Jenkins, we sit down with Lil Keke to talk ab…

“The way I look at music is it's all mine” says Bartees Strange. “I can do whatever I want with whatever I hear, period.” When Bartees approaches a song—whether he’s reimagining or remixing another a…

“All I need to be inspired is to be alive,” says Joan Armatrading. Throughout a career spanning over 50 years, Joan credits her singular songwriting to a relentless fascination with other people: how…

We’re breaking format to create something completely new: a collaborative performance of music, poetry and ideas between Hanif, artist Thao Nguyen (Thao & The Get Down Stay Down) and scholar Josh Kun…

Hanif and Grammy award winning artist H.E.R. sit down to talk all about the guitar: H.E.R.’s relationship to the instrument, her many inspirations and the long lineage of Black women who’ve defined p…

“His fingerprints are all over the culture.” On this week’s episode, we pay tribute to the great Biz Markie, the legendary rapper, deejay, sampler, and emcee who passed away earlier this month. Hanif…

Love it or hate it, every summer has a song you just can’t escape from. It’s playing out of every car window, at every bodega, in every club and in your head on repeat. “We are all unknowingly enteri…

 “I care about words more than music,” says musician Lucy Dacus. Lucy recently released her third album, Home Video is a compilation of stories and vignettes pulled directly from her journals, dating…

For 50 years, footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival – a summer-long fête featuring the likes of Nina Simone, Sly and The Family Stone, and Stevie Wonder – was buried in the archives. And the story …