You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

Song Exploder is sponsored by La La La Lie, which is a next generation tool to remove vocals and separate music tracks, to make stems quickly and easily.

And there's a good chance you've heard it here on

Song Exploder, because sometimes they'll get voice memos or demos that have vocals baked into the

recording. And I'll want to play that music while my guest is talking about it. But I really don't like

having somebody talk over singing. So I'll use La La La Lie to quickly make an instrumental track,

and then I can cut back and forth between the actual demo and that instrumental. It's very,

very useful. If you want to check it out, go to La La La Lie and use promo code Song Exploder 30

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I would like to be in awe of something that I did not know existed when I woke up that morning.

This is Key Change, where I talked to fascinating people about the music that transformed their lives.

And my guest today is Hanif Abdurkeb, a poet, cultural critic, and New York Times best-selling author of books like,

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Go A Head in the Rain, Notes to a Tribe called Quest, and New York Times bestselling author of books like, They Can't Kill Us Until

They Kill Us, Go A Head in the Rain, Notes to a Tribe called Quest, and a Little Devil

in America, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. I've been a guest on

Hanif's podcast, Object of Sound, and I just love reading and hearing his thoughts about music.

When I first started toying with the idea for this key change series,

I was specifically excited about the idea that it could give me the chance to have Hanif on as a guest.

So, Hanif, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. I feel like you have an encyclopedic knowledge

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