Kiana Fitzgerald
Kiana Fitzgerald is a freelance music journalist, cultural critic, and DJ. She writes for the world from deep in the heart of Texas.
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Through her career, Bey has shown that there are more levels to her artistry than we could have imagined. And she's using those levels to delve further into her personalized elevation of black women.
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While you were watching Frank Ocean build a staircase, NPR Music contributors Bobby Carter and Kiana Fitzgerald were listening to these records.
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Chance the Rapper and A Tribe Called Quest received deserved accolades, but there were many more rap records worthy of celebration this year.
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Depression and addiction stymied the rapper after a promising debut on the same label that launched Kendrick Lamar. On The Sun's Tirade, he sounds like a new man, refreshed and self-aware.
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This year's AfroPunk Festival in Brooklyn features artists who are expanding the universe of punk and ideas about who belongs there.
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The powerhouse singer and her army of beautifully diverse women turn out a post-apocalyptic land.
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The Chicago rapper's new mixtape, Coloring Book, walks a line between the secular and the religious, bringing gospel sounds to listeners who may not have darkened the doors of a church in a while.
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The Brooklyn rapper-producer's latest instrumental album is evenly weighted from front to back. There's never an off moment — or even a precarious one.
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The story she's telling this time, that of a woman wronged, is universal, but the way she's delivered it is a crystal-clear representation of the black female experience.
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The new "it" guy of that place where R&B and hip-hop overlap showed why he's attracted so much attention at NPR Music's SXSW showcase at Stubb's.