This year's best hip-hop — including Westside Gunn, Mach-Hommy and Moor Mother — comes from death and defiance, erotic power and provocation, Black joy and pain — and that's just the shortlist.
Discover a broad range of the year's best classical albums, from groundbreaking teenage percussionists and innovative opera singers to fierce orchestral composers and brainy pianists.
Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year.
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality.
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, masters of throwback, have delivered a tribute to Black pop's imperial era. If you're feeling the album's sound, there's plenty more where it came from.
NPR member stations share a mix of popular songs playing on their airwaves in October, including music from alt-J, Anderson .Paak, The Killers and more.
On World Opera Day, watch scenes that will make you fall in love with the art form — from a crazy day at Mozart's diner to a trippy trip to China with Richard Nixon.
Comparing the station to the moon landing may have come off as hubristic at the time, but MTV would go on to change pop music and its impact on popular culture.