Organizers of the annual Burning Man music and arts festival lifted a driving ban on Monday afternoon as muddy roads that had stranded thousands of attendees in the Nevada desert had dried up enough to allow people to begin leaving. "Exodus operations have officially begun in Black Rock City," organizers posted at 2 p.m. local time. Organizers also asked attendees not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert. The site of the festival is remotely located in northern Nevada, about 120 miles north of Reno. On Sunday, attendees had been stranded after storms turned Nevada's Black Rock Desert playa into a mud bath. Close to an inch of precipitation flooded the area starting on Friday, prompting event organizers to close access to the festival until vehicles could safely pass and to warn campers to conserve food and water. Despite reports of stuck vehicles, overflowing port-a-potties, postponed bus pickups and spotty Wi-Fi service, several attendees who spoke to NPR say the wet weather hadn't dampened moods. "We're pooling all our food as far as resources. And I would say honestly, walking around the city, spirits are pretty high," attendee Anya Kamenetz said on Sunday. The challenging conditions are testing a community of so-called burners, which touts self-reliance and communal effort among its core principles. Event volunteer Josh Lease said that in true Burning Man spirit, people are sharing warm clothes and phone chargers where they can — and music is blaring. "It's like any other Burning Man, just muddy," he told NPR on Saturday evening. "The warnings do sound very dire, and of course, the organization has to tell people to take care," said Claudia Peschiutta, an editor with NPR's Morning Edition who attended the event, but "I haven't seen one person who seems worried about it at all." Some frustration, however, started to seep in for some attendees by Sunday. In rainy Burning Mans past, longtime burner Joe Bamberg said he's seen couches, carpets and clothes eventually dry out. But this time, he said, "all is damp and will be ruined by mold," he said. "I am not thrilled," said Bamberg, who added: "People make do, it is part of the adventure." Meanwhile, authorities in Nevada were investigating a death at the site. The Pershing County Sheriff's Office said on Saturday that a person died during the event but offered few details, including whether the death was weather-related, KNSD-TV reported. The muck is expected to dry up starting Monday, which is forecast to see clear skies, promising long waits in traffic during the exodus on the final day of the annual event. But event organizers have yet to give an estimate of when gates will open to cars.

Attendees are urged to shelter in place

The Burning Man Organization had begun telling attendees to shelter in place on Saturday, when it announced that access into and out of the site was closed for the remainder of the event, which runs from Aug. 27 through Sep. 4. Only emergency vehicles were allowed to pass, the organization said in a statement. "Conserve food, water, and fuel, and shelter in a warm, safe space," the statement urged those stuck in the desert. Although they urged attendees against driving on Sunday, event officials said that some vehicles designed for off-road terrain had been able to navigate the mud and successfully leave the event. Other attendees chose to walk several miles across the muck to exit the grounds. The Burning Man Organization advised people not to make the foot journey at night. "Make sure you have water and the strength to walk as much as 5 miles through the mud," the nonprofit said. "This isn't a simple solution, but it is a possible one should you need or want to make the trek." Music producer Diplo said he and comedian Chris Rock escaped the event on Saturday after walking 6 miles before hitching a ride from a fan in a pickup truck. "I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out cuz I have a show in dc tonight and didnt want to let yall down," he wrote in an Instagram post. Neal Katyal, former acting Obama-era solicitor general, also made the trek out. He said he was safe after his first trip to the festival ended with "an incredibly harrowing 6-mile hike at midnight through heavy and slippery mud." President Biden had been briefed on the situation, according to a White House official. Event attendees were told over the weekend to listen to state and local officials, and event organizers, the administration official said.

The conditions put Burning Man community spirit to the test

"We have come here knowing this is a place where we bring everything we need to survive," the organization said in a statement on Saturday night. "It is because of this that we are all well-prepared for a weather event like this." "We have done table-top drills for events like this. We are engaged full-time on all aspects of safety and looking ahead to our Exodus as our next priority." Organizers said they would send mobile cell trailers and open up the internet to multiple areas throughout the desert playa, as well as try to help transport buses out of the area. "Get some rest and spend some quality time with your campmates," the festival said in the Saturday night statement. "We will all get out of this, it will just take time." Attendee Bobby White, who hosts the TV series Sailing Doodles, squelched through the mud against a backdrop of gunmetal skies and soggy tents in a YouTube video posted Saturday. "Every time you step, you pick up more mud and it's just really hard to move," White said. With the gates closed, service vehicles on Saturday weren't able to reach the port-a-potties in a timely manner to empty the waste, causing toilets to overflow, attendee Kris Edwards said in a video posted to TikTok. Video posted to social media on Sunday afternoon showed people cheering upon the arrival of a sanitation service vehicle. The weather forced the postponement of some art installation burns, including the burning of the namesake wooden-man effigy, a ritual that traditionally happens on Saturday night. This isn't the first time the entrance was blocked at this year's festival. A group of climate protesters caused miles of gridlock after parking a 28-foot trailer in the way at the start of the event.

TikTok successfully got in formation to get a fan to Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour. Jon Hetherington was supposed to fly to Seattle last week for a Beyoncé concert, but he couldn't complete the flight because his wheelchair was too tall, which meant he would miss the show. He posted the dilemma on TikTok, and hundreds of the social platform's users began tagging Beyoncé and Parkwood Entertainment, her production and entertainment company. A representative for the singer reached out to him and soon he was on his way to see her perform in Texas. The 34-year-old Oregon resident was pictured with Beyoncé at Thursday's Dallas show. "To the queen herself @beyonce, I will treasure those words you said and the hugs you gave," he wrote on Instagram. "I meant every word I said. No, for anyone and everyone reading this, I will not ever share with you what was said to me, don't even try it. That moment is between the two of us." Hetherington has cerebral palsy, and said that while he was at Oregon's Eugene Airport last Thursday everything proceeded as normal at first. An Alaska Airlines employee examined his ID and tagged his wheelchair, and even remembered him because had flown flew to Seattle two weeks earlier to see singer Janelle Monáe kick off their tour, he told NPR. The employee remembered Hetherington's chair needed some extra finagling, which Hetherington said delayed the earlier flight about 20 minutes, but he was not alerted of any other issues. This time around, Hetherington said an airline employee told him his chair was four inches too tall, then moved him out of his chair and attempted to collapse it, to no avail, while another employee looked online for information about the chair. He was finally given a complaint resolution form and told only an Airbus plane would be able to fit his wheelchair.

Frustrated at the airport, he turned to TikTok

But they did not find any available Airbus flights that would get him there in time for the show. So he went to TikTok. "Well, guess I'm not going to see Seattle, and I'm not seeing Beyoncé," he said in the video. "So after 25 years of waiting, I'm not seeing Beyoncé tonight, so ableism strikes again." "I went outside and I was just pissed. I was demoralized at that point," Hetherington told NPR. "I have about 22,000 followers on TikTok and I usually get about a couple hundred views on my videos, so I thought, 'OK, a couple hundred people will see it.' I never in a billion lifetimes would have thought that this whole thing would have taken off like it did." The video was watched more than 90,000 times. Hetherington and Alaska Airlines said his airline ticket has been refunded. "We feel terrible about our guest's travel experience with us. We're always aiming to do better as we encounter situations such as this one," Alaska Airlines said in a statement. "Our Boeing [aircraft] have dimension limitations when it comes to loading battery-powered mobility aids, like a wheelchair, into the cargo hold." According to Alaska Airlines, its Boeing planes can fit wheelchairs that are a maximum of 34 inches high, while Airbus aircraft can fit ones up to 46 inches. Although not required, the airlines said it recommends people with mobility aids put in a special service request to determine ahead of their flight if their aid can be accommodated.

Why he's such a big Beyoncé fan

Hetherington, who is pansexual, said he has been a Beyoncé fan since he was 9 years old. He said he admires that she is paying homage to the LGBTQ+ community with her Renaissance album, amid passed and potential U.S. legislation that would prohibit youth from receiving gender-affirming care, bar books with LGBTQ+ subject matter from public libraries and ban transgender students from using bathrooms matching the gender they identify with. "She is probably, I would say, the most famous Black woman in the world, and for her to use that stature, that power and authority to lift up — specifically now — the queer community ... is no small thing," Hetherington said. But despite the happy ending, he said the incident is indicative of a bigger issue. After the Monáe concert, he couldn't find a taxi that was wheelchair-friendly, leaving him stranded in the streets of Seattle from midnight to 9 a.m. The battery of his wheelchair died at 8 a.m., he said. "This is not about a concert," he said. "This is not about one artist. This is not about one airline. This is about systemic issues of ableism that are happening every day. Disabled people are dealing with this in society, in general, and our society has been built to exclude disabled people. That's what's important."

Arriving at the Tiny Desk not long after becoming the first female artist to have a Spanish-language album top the Billboard 200 chart, Colombian singer Karol G shined brighter than ever. With an all-female crew backing her, the proud energia femenina and the prowess of a band dominated exclusively by women is undeniably brilliant here. It was also the first time in many years, she said, that she hadn't rehearsed without her typical on-stage equipment, like in-ear monitors. "I forgot how cool it feels," she said. Authenticity isn't a prescription for Karol G, it's a natural state — something that she carries with her, waiting for the next opportunity to reveal another version of Carolina. "CAROLINA," her given name, was also the title of the opening track of her performance, as she got to jamming in a manner atypical for the superstar. Trading her flute and trumpet for an accordion and tuba she "bring[s] some Mexican vibe to this place," she said, with "GUCCI LOS PAÑOS." She paused between songs and offered a cheers to the room, admitting that she had meant to sip her Mezcalito before the previous song. She emphasized the rawness of the moment by slowing things down for a stripped down, reggae-leaning version of "PERO TÚ." Sliding seamlessly into a bossa nova-esque "MERCURIO" — the version she wishes she'd included on the album — "La Bichota" brought the music back up and danced herself off stage. Away from the stadium lights, Karol G's performance wasn't just a blip of normalcy for the pop star — it was permission from the self-described "happy-heartbreak girl" to get up, whether in the streets of Medellín or an office in Washington, D.C., and dance with every version of yourself. SET LIST

• "CAROLINA"
• "GUCCI LOS PAÑOS"
• "PERO TÚ"
• "MERCURIO"

MUSICIANS

• Carolina Giraldo (Karol G): vocals
• Susana Vasquez: guitar
• Jemma Heigis: piano
• Giulliana Merello: drums
• Patricia Ligia: bass
• Crystal Torres: trumpet
• Hailey-Mae Niswanger: flute
• Katiuska Fernandes: percussion
• Irany Martinez: accordion
• India Anderson: tuba
• Rob Trujillo: musical director

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Anamaria Sayre
• Director/Editor: Kara Frame
• Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin
• Creative Director: Bob Boilen
• Series Producer: Bobby Carter
• Videographers:  Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant, Sofia Seidel, Michael Zamora
• Audio Assistant: Josephine Nyounai
• Production Assistant: Ashley Pointer
• Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Maia Stern, Hazel Cills, Marissa Lorusso, Pilar Galván, Jill Britton
• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
• Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

[audio mp3="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2023/07/20230706_asc_c1cf55f6-734b-45e0-8139-85c41d6720bd.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1105&d=2422&story=1185749989&ft=nprml&f=1185749989"][/audio] Polly Jean Harvey is indisputably one of the most adventurous musicians of our time. In fact, to call her simply a musician is inaccurate: She is a visual artist and a multidisciplinary performer who has worked in theater, film and video and published two books of poetry. She's released 10 studio albums under the name PJ Harvey, two with her longtime collaborator John Parish, scores for the film All About Eve and the TV show Bad Sisters and three video albums. In 2022 Harvey published her most ambitious written work, the epic poem Orlam, written over eight years as she learned to be a poet and mastered the dialect of the English coastal county Dorset, where she grew up. She uses that almost-lost dialect throughout Orlam as she chronicles the journey out of childhood of a 9-year-old girl named Ira-Abel. Her heroine encounters ghosts and other supernatural beings — her oracle is the all-seeing eye of a dead lamb, the Orlam of the book's title — as well as humans who fail her, leading her to assume a new self. The plot matters less than Harvey's evocation of a landscape that teems with every kind of life. Part hero's journey, part almanac, part ode to a lost tongue, Orlam, like PJ Harvey's music, creates an artistic realm of its own. It runs on the rhythms of the seasons and captures the beauty, fantastical rawness and occasional horror of English rural life. PJ Harvey's new album, I Inside the Old Year Dying (out July 7), further illuminates the world Orlam brought to the page. Originally Harvey planned a theater piece to expand upon the work, but these musical expansions of her poems came to her in a three-week rush as she practiced piano and guitar. Enlisting her "musical soulmate" Parish and longtime producer Flood, she concocted a sound that evokes the natural world without sounding at all like what we now think of as folk music. It's ragged, yet highly crafted — a key element is the field recordings Adam "Cecil" Bartlett brought to the studio, which the team distorted to add eerie atmosphere — and as immediate as it is mysterious. Voicing phrases in the Dorset tongue, Harvey becomes an every-creature, part Ira-Abel, part ghost, part animal, always herself. From her home in Dorset, Harvey spoke with me about working to make her music stranger, adopting characters throughout her career and the value of a good joke. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Ann Powers: In the song "Prayer at the Gate," which opens I Inside the Old Year Dying, you have a line: "Speak your wordle to me." "Wordle" here is not a popular American puzzle, but the term for "world" in the Dorset dialect, which you use throughout the album. The phrase serves a purpose inside the story that the song is telling, but it also describes what you've done with this album, with the book Orlam that you published last year and the drawings you've made depicting the landscapes in these projects: You have spoken a world. Can you talk a little bit about how you've woven together each practice that you've employed to do so — writing, drawing, making music, even performing the poems as a reader — to bring this encompassing narrative to life? PJ Harvey: It quite quickly took its own shape, and then felt like it was leading me. But one of the keys that opened up this world for me was the Dorset dialect. As a poet, it gave me such another lively form to work with, because it gave the words a kind of double meaning. For instance, you're pulling the word "wordle" out. Although it means "world" in Dorset dialect, you've also got "word" in there — and, of course, the word of God. It carries such an enormous capacity for wrapping everything together. That was a journey I went on with the whole of the dialect within the book. Initially, I was just aiming to write my second collection of poetry. I was working with Don Paterson, who was my mentor, on a three year poetry course, and it was on my coursework that the first few poems of Orlam were written and Don and I quickly saw that something was beginning to take shape. I've always been someone that draws and creates music, and as I've got older it's become more and more natural for me that they all just sort of bleed together: If I'm a bit stuck on a poem and I can't work out where it's going, I'll often spend time drawing it as a way to help me understand more of what I'm trying to say. Likewise, I might also play it through the piano — sort of "play" the feeling. And therefore, this work kind of morphed into drawings, and then into music as well. It's almost like you're accessing different parts of your body, your own sensory system, to bring this to life. It does feel like that. I think when I was younger, I used to try and keep them in their separate categories. But now I realize that you really can't, and it's actually detrimental. The whole of the work flows better if I just let it be what it's gonna be; I've realized that I'm just an artist that makes things out of words and music and images, and I'm never quite sure what I'm going to end up with. Even in the early stages of writing a song, I very often see things very visually: I might see a scene, almost like a scene from a film, and I'll see the colors and the time of day. The images, the words, the music — they all feed each other. Can you explain the story and the world of Orlam and the new album, for those who might not have yet had the pleasure of entering them? The book Orlam is my second collection of poetry. It took me eight years to write. It's basically a year in the life of a 9-year-old in a rural part of the west of England, in a non-specific era. And it documents her year, month by month, paying particular attention to what's happening in the natural world around her, observing nature and its cyclical patterns. It's just what happens to her in that one year, and it's fantastical, nonsensical, but sensical at the same time. I loved reading Orlam. It's both linear and nonlinear; as you say, it runs on kind of a seasonal clock and collapses things together. For example, Gore Wood is a real place in Dorset that contains your imaginary village of "Underwhelm," where the child hero Ira-Abel lives. In one way, this is very personal work: It reflects your home, the place you know best. In another way, it's absolutely mythic — fantastical, as you say. It makes me want to ask you, Polly, where are you in this work? Where is the self? Are you standing apart, or are you there with Ira-Abel? Or are you Ira-Abel herself, in the forest pulling bark from the trees? I think it's a mixture, Ann. As far as I can tell, pretty much every artist draws on what they know; there has to be elements of experience in order to really reach deep inside of you. But I also have a playful imagination, and I think that the work of an artist is to really keep the imaginative capacity alive that we have as children. As a child, we can create anything out of nothing, and do, on a daily basis. And I find that in order to remain an active and creative artist, I have to keep tapping into that same place. I read several interviews with you in which you talked about this idea of collapse, as a kind of aesthetic or action that runs through these works: the collapse of time and space, blurring of genders, of myth and reality, life and death. How do you convey this within these songs? I was thinking of "Lwonesome Tonight," which is also a poem in Orlam, and blends images of Elvis, Jesus and the natural world. How does collapse work for you as a principle in this music and in the book? Coming back to poetry, you can make the language work really hard for you: Often words carry double, sometimes triple meanings. You've got things like Elvis, who was also known as "The King," appearing on Maundy Day, which is a religious festival celebrating the last supper. So, we've got Christ, we've got Elvis, we've got a king — do you see what I mean? We can bring lots of threads in, but the beauty of poetry is that you can have those layers existing all at the same time. It can mean a lot of things, depending on what the reader or the listener wants to pull out of it and make theirs. I very specifically wanted to set out to do that, to have this nonlinear, no-era, every-era world going on. Also, going back to the nonlinear collapsing of time and space, I sort of feel that on a daily basis anyway. Particularly simple things like dream or wakefulness, going into sleep, day and night — like, where do we go when we sleep? You enter this whole different parallel universe, and I feel that we're sort of there anyway. Life and death is such a fine line. Marrying that with the way the seasons change year after year, the way one year collapses into another — what is the line between male and female, or child and adult? That's what I was very interested in, that place of a threshold where you're in a sort of between worlds, a shadowland. Another artist might have turned to identifiable folk sounds for this album, with its rural setting, its connection to old stories. You did not. This is a PJ Harvey record; it's recognizable completely as part of your various but unified body of work. But I wonder if you were thinking about folk traditions at all as you were creating the music. I very much wanted to avoid tipping into predictable folk music, which these words and this subject matter would have lent itself to so well, so I went the opposite direction. Other than the main instrument and the voice, I really wanted everything to be quite unidentifiable and strange, because of that need to create this magical, mystical unknown universe that I wanted the words to inhabit. It was a very hard thing to do. So often, we would jettison a sound because it was too familiar to us. And Flood and John Parish, who I worked very closely with in creating the sound, we were all on the same direction: trying really hard to not sound predictable, but also not to sound like anything that we felt that we'd done together before, because we've worked together for 30 years now. We're all very interested in continuing to discover new things and create new sounds, and that gets harder the more work that you've made, because there's more to avoid. But I really feel that we pushed ourselves into quite new places — certainly with my singing, I feel like I haven't sung before like I do on this record. I'm so glad you brought that up — I've been thinking about your voice on this record and how it does reach a new place, but carries with it the voices you've given us in the past. Many people might mark the beginning of your intense vocal experimentation at the album White Chalk, when you first focused on your higher register. But throughout your career, you've distorted your voice, both as it emanates from your body and using studio effects. It's almost like your voice is more a channel for all of these different selves — Polly, the characters you create — than simply "your voice." Was there a point when you realized, about your singing and your music in general, that you were able to channel all of these selves and worlds? I think on the first couple of albums, Dry and Rid of Me, I was just doing it naturally, but I wasn't really aware that I was doing it. For me, it was trying to inhabit the character of the song: Who's the narrator of this song, and how would they portray that song. As I've become more consciously aware of what I'm doing, probably from To Bring You My Love onwards, I would dive into that even more — like, really inhabit the character. A song like "Working for the Man," I think Flood had me singing underneath a blanket with a microphone taped to my throat, in the process of trying to find that claustrophobic, terrifying voice. The more that I've worked in the world of theater and film, I've come to really enjoy and appreciate watching actors and how actors inhabit a character. That's not to say that I feel like I'm leaping into a different character — I often don't. It's more like just opening the doorway for something to come through you in a really pure way. Speaking of actors, your good friend Ben Wishaw appears on this record — he does some vocalizing. He was a sounding board for you for this record, right? At one stage we were thinking about putting Orlam onstage, and so I'd been experimenting with read-throughs and workshops with Ben Whishaw, the actor Colin Morgan and a wonderful theater director called Ian Rickson. It just didn't really come to life; we all felt that it's not at its best in this form. But then it grew into a musical piece, which has become this album. And so because Colin and Ben had already been on quite a lot of the journey with me — they'd been reading the poems with me, I'd been showing them the poems as they've grown — it made a lot of sense that they'd be involved as the other voices on the record, and I knew that they had great voices. When their voice steps in, it adds a completely different dimension — like when you hear the male characters stepping in the choruses, or Ben's voice stepping in to sing "Love Me Tender." Is he the Elvis of this record? I think he is, yeah. [Laughs] He might be the Elvis of a lot of people's hearts. Having said that, I do think Colin's singing some parts in "I Inside the Old I Dying," which are also the Wyman-Elvis character's, so I think it's kind of a combination of the both of them. I really wanted to ask you about the incorporation of field recordings, found sounds, distorted elements, to build the world. When I was first thinking that I might put Orlam on stage, I began to just collect field recordings, recording them myself. But then also, because I've worked in the theater world a lot, I had a lot of great sound designer friends. And sound designers for theater have just about any sound you can think of at their fingertips, just a sort of library of sounds which are open for sound designers to use. So I could be as specific as to say to somebody, "Can you find me a November wind, blowing through barbed wire at dawn?" And they would have, like, three different options for me. When it turned into a musical album rather than a theater piece, I still wanted to make use of these natural noises. But in the same way that I wanted to avoid using a stereotypical folk sound, I wanted to avoid these natural sounds as being stereotypical "nature" noises. And so we fed them through lots of very basic analog gear, which was manipulated by hand in real time, so the album actually was basically recorded live. We were all in a room together — myself, John Parish, Flood and Cecil. Cecil was operating the field recordings, playing them in real time — through tape recorders that you're speeding up, slowing down, or playing on keyboard after programming in the natural sounds. John and I would improvise with him: Sometimes I might be on bass, or I'd be on guitar or piano; John might be on drums, or he might be on guitar or keyboards. And then Flood, very often, would set up some sort of mic that he'd feed back into one of his really early synthesizers, from when they were first built. I mean, these synthesizers, I'd never seen anything like it — they look like an old wooden dresser or a sideboard, crossed with a telephone exchange. It was all wonderfully sort of homemade, you know? We were just feeding off each other in the moment. My vocals were done at the same time, so my voice has the drums and all the other sounds going down it, which leads to this beautiful sort of world that you enter. Everything was recorded in the same room together; all of the sounds are going down every single microphone. I know you call yourself a maker, and this feels like very much a maker's project. It fits in with, you know, people who are hand-dyeing quilts made from marigolds. I've always felt like that. I don't know why. I've tried so many times to step into the digital world with equipment that actually works when you press go, but I still go back to my analog equipment. There's just something so tactile, and I love that it makes mistakes and it makes hiss and it goes wrong. There's something so wonderful about that haphazardness. Well, in this world of all of these hand-hewn elements, the central one for me is the Dorset dialect. You were so diligent in learning this dialect, employing it within Orlam in remarkable ways. It's a nearly lost language, and you use it throughout your poetry, mixing it up with standard English and what I like to call "the PJ Harvey language," which also exists. In some ways, this recalls for me the work of poets like George Mackay Brown, who I know you love, or more currently, someone like Doireann Ní Ghríofa in Ireland, or Martin Shaw, the storyteller — who are not exactly preserving lost stories and lost languages, but revivifying them by changing them. I wonder how you first made the decision to use the Dorset dialect — and then, as they say in the most corny way, how did you make it your own? One of the poems I wrote early on in my mentorship course with Don Paterson had been leaning into some of the words I'd remembered from being a child — I remembered the elders in the village using those words. And they're still used to this day in rural parts of England and Wales and Scotland. You know, there's a lot of dialects still running through people, and it's precious. I was just so fascinated in it because it still felt alive within me at some level. I sort of knew the words, but they've also got this guttural sonic quality that you sort of understand the word, even if you don't in a comprehensive way. You feel it through the sound. You understand it through the sound of the word. Because I'd begun to use it in these early poems, it was Don that said to me, "I think this could be a really fantastic direction for you to go." And that led me on to reading poets like William Barnes and Thomas Hardy, both of whom used dialect in their work. William Barnes collected together the Dorset dialect in a glossary, and that sort of became my bible. But you were very right to mention George Mackay Brown: Even Shakespeare invented his own words, but the thing about Mackay Brown is that he also invented his own iconography. He'd build his characters. I was very interested in building my cast of characters as he did, and inventing my own words. When I couldn't find the dialectal word for what I needed, then I just made it up. And that is the way that dialect was built anyway. There's no wrong way of doing it. Is there a favorite word or phrase in one of these songs that you can single out? Something you'd love to sing, something you'd love to have roll off your tongue? Well, I think that the song title "Seem an I" is a great example, because "seem an I" means "Well, it seems to me ... ." I just think it's beautiful. It's so elegant and so beautiful and so moving, really. And that started off that whole song. In "Seem an I," you have the wonderful Dorset phrase "bedraggled angels" to describe wet sheep, and then this image of Ira-Abel's ripped fingernails from pulling clay from the riverbank. As a woman who grew up a country girl, I imagine this imagery came naturally to you. So much writing about nature can be sentimental, or gauzy; how do you keep it dirty? I don't know if it makes sense to say a "sense of humor." But I think I have a great sense of humor, and a lot of people don't know that. There's a lot of darkness in our world that we deal with on a daily basis, and I think to see the humor in really dark things can be a lifesaver. You can see a wet sheep at dusk, you can see a bedraggled angel, and there's humor but it's also serious at the same time. I think I also refer to the ewes as "shabby mothers." Again, it's kind of conjuring the actual image too. This is the other thing I learned with Don Patterson in my poetry mentorship: Every single word you use in a poem has to work really hard for you. So by saying "bedraggled angels," we think of the whiteness of the fleece, but you also think of the fleece wet and heavy. Fleece kind of gets pulled off by brambles, and they always look a bit shabby with their wool coming off of them. So you've got a lot of different images going hand in hand with the actual meaning of the words that you're using. Once when you were asked about your penchant for dark themes, you said you have a natural inclination to look under the surface — which gave me an image of you lifting up a log and seeing all the creepy crawlies under it. From this view, darkness is truly illuminating; it's a source of growth. I wondered if it's been frustrating to you over the years when you've been pegged as a sort of goth wraith, when in fact you're someone out there poking around in the life cycle. Yeah, it's exactly that, Ann. I learned early on to not get frustrated by feeling like people didn't fully see what I was trying to do. I just continued to just go about my work. But it is that. I mean, I've always just been so curious as a person. I love learning. That's also why I don't want to do the same things over and over again — seeing where I can go next just so excites me. So yes, exactly: I love seeing what's under the surface when you lift it up. I love seeing where something might lead me if I've got the courage to follow it. And I've always been like that. Life is such a wonderful thing to just keep exploring. Especially on your past few albums, you have gone to places where other artists don't always go. You've confronted the absolute goriness of war. You've walked the streets of different cities to see the ugliness and the beauty in those places. And here, you bring us into these woods, into this village, where a specific darkness is happening. One darkness you confront in this work is sexual abuse, and the sexual abuse of children: A key point in the story of Ira-Abel is when she is assaulted in a shed by a local boy. Other male figures in Underwhelm exhibit predatory behavior. I wondered why, for you, it was important to make this a linchpin in the story of Ira-Abel. There's a lot of lightness and a lot of humor in the book — but there's also a lot of darkness, as there is in our lives. I wanted it to reflect that. But also, there need to be moments of transformation in order to move our narrative. And so there had to be also this tipping point in my story that was going to move the main character into a moment of transformation and towards her destiny. And this was part of the story, in context, that was going to do that. Well, that transformation of which you speak — you use the term "unsexed," and there is a fascinating instability of gender throughout the story, and even of species. Orlam, we haven't mentioned, is an all-seeing eye of a dead lamb — an undead lamb, maybe. There's a way in which there's no separation between human and animal in this world, or human and spirit. So I wondered how the kind of, I don't want to say genderlessness, but the fluidity of gender connects with these other forms of fluidity. Yeah, I think it ties back into what we were talking about earlier: the collapsing of era, and of time and of place. I also wanted to collapse, as much as I could, all of those other boundaries — of man or woman, animal or human, natural or man-made, all of it. I was interested in each character having a dual aspect to them — male, female. A lot of their names are hyphenated names, and each name has a meaning. So again, it was just showing the nonlinear quality of how I feel life to be. I just wanted it to be as open as I feel it is. There's a way, when you're out in the woods, that that nonlinear quality takes over. I don't want to be corny about it or romanticize nature, but it makes sense to me for this story that you would challenge those boundaries. I think at a subconscious level, I just knew that I didn't want anything to be pinned down. When I'm in the moment in music — not just my own, but even if I'm enraptured by somebody else's, whether live or just listening on a record — I don't feel one thing or another. I don't feel alive nor dead. I don't feel man nor woman. I just feel the music. And I think it was about wanting to tap into that really pure place where you just feel, and you just experience, and nothing yet really has a name. Going back to what I was saying earlier about trying to keep the childhood imagination alive: When you're a child, nothing really does have a name, you know? We go around saying, "Why is that blue? What is blue? What does blue mean?" So it's sort of just seeing everything in use for the first time, and then really looking at it again and asking, "What is this?" I just have one final question. I know that you were at something of a crisis point about making music when you started on this album. When you turned to Orlam as a book, you said that music had lost its primary hold on you. Did that feeling of music as the center return? Or do you feel that you, like Ira-Abel, have transformed — and now, as a whole maker, constantly making in different realms, you are just more holistically creative? Do you think it's more possible today for artists to not necessarily identify as one thing than it maybe was before the various entertainment industries took over? Is it more possible to simply be a maker? I mean, going back to William Blake: He wrote songs, he drew beautifully, he wrote incredible poems. So I think forever, artists have been doing many things at the same time. David Lynch, he's a wonderful artist as well as a filmmaker. [The British director] Steve McQueen — filmmaker, sculptor. You could go on and on. So I think it's very natural for artists to move through different media. For me, I temporarily felt that I lost my connection to music. And actually, going back to Steve McQueen, he was enormously helpful to me at that time, when I talked to him about this sort of heartbreak I was feeling, like I'd lost the joy in it all. He encouraged me to take the boundaries away, and just look at what I loved. He was saying to me, "Well, what do you love? You love words, you love images and you love music. Just think about what can you do with those three things. It doesn't have to be anything: It doesn't have to be an album, it doesn't have to be a drawing. You've just got these three things that you love." It helped me re-find the joy in it again — that joy that I could remember having initially, when I first started writing songs when I was 17. It was just utter joy, and that was what I had lost. Through this journey, through writing Orlam, through spending years doing that alone, I sort of rekindled my love of everything and took away all those boundaries. And now I feel more full of joy, and like anything is possible again, than I'd felt in absolutely years.

When I enter the Manhattan studio where I'm scheduled to meet Veeze, he's working, looking over his producer Tye Beats' shoulder as he chops up a sample of "EARFQUAKE" by Tyler, The Creator. Tye deftly stitches the neck-breaking drums that have become the trademark of Michigan rap to the pattern. Swiveling in an office chair, Veeze seems exhausted, maybe slightly annoyed by the presence of another journalist deep in a rare press run. (He hates doing interviews.) Right here, facing a rack of screens and speakers, is the mode in which the Detroit rapper seems most comfortable — a studio rat through-and-through; studious, skilled and focused. But when Veeze refocuses his attention toward me, his ridiculous personality immediately jumps out. He cracks jokes constantly — about his idol-turned-mentor Future, about struggling to censor himself in a Pistons halftime performance, about his vision for his own Jimmy Fallon-esque late-night show, about rappers in the Far East biting the Michigan sound. He practically fanboys talking about a random studio session with one of his favorite artists, Playboi Carti, who praised his music and played him the scrapped deluxe edition of Whole Lotta Red. Somehow Veeze is one of the best rappers and one of us, a frank, relatable and often hilarious presence online, whether or not it's intentional. Even with his music, he'll scream along to a snippet he's premiering on IG Live as though he can't believe he came up with it. This balance between the cool and the personable, effortless bars and Twitter memes, has vaulted Veeze into the vanguard of Michigan's rap scene. Like every great before him, he's developed a style that is utterly his own. Rapping in a deceptively versatile mutter-croak, Veeze ekes out dense, snake-like verses that are as captionable and clever as they are transparent about his vices: "The drank be calling me the most when I feel like quitting." (I've seen some first-listeners struggle to get into Veeze; I'll just say that when you get it, you get it.) Sometimes he'll bring his voice a hair's breadth from your ears like he's doing ASMR. On the sinister 2022 single, "Close Friends," his murmurs froth as they're sent through sludgy Auto-Tune. You can do the dot-connecting — the stoicism of Detroit peer Babyface Ray, the slurred stylings of Future and Gucci and Young Nudy, the baby voice of Carti, the whimsy of Chief Keef — but it's almost a disservice to the expansive world that Veeze has constructed with his voice. As one of a few artists in the insular Michigan scene that has entered the wider rap ecosystem, Veeze seemed poised to take the proverbial next step. Speaking to him, it's obvious he's ready. He's studied rappers past and present on a technical level, as well as how they've navigated the shifting tides of culture and cool. He brings up his collaborator, Chicago rapper LUCKI, as a example of someone who he noticed recently became the "cool" thing to rep, despite putting in work for over a decade. For years, Veeze's lore was missing a crucial component: an album. Since his urgent 2020 hit, "Law N Order," (which, of course, samples the theme from the long-running cop procedural) the rapper has teased his debut, GANGER (a word he coined to describe himself and his partners), with a string of increasingly knotty and thrilling singles, features and leaks. Between Veeze's rising star and constant revisions and pushbacks, the album took on a mythic quality. Veeze says the reception to "Close Friends" (particularly from his friend Lil Baby, who "just listened to the s*** every day") motivated him to go full album mode. GANGER somehow lives up to the hype — a mean, muggy sampler that pulls off the rare feat of being an Intro To Veeze and appealing to long-term fans. But when I spoke to him on that chilly March evening, he was still working on the project, shifty about its tracklist, details and release date, probably because he didn't have all the answers himself yet. We talked about leak culture, the far-reaching sound of Michigan, his idea of taste and whether or not Future actually means his tweets. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Mano Sundaresan: When you first started rapping, who were you trying to channel? Veeze: Really just underground s*** and mixtape s***, like Gucci [Mane] and Sosa [Chief Keef]. Kodak Black, too. Still to this day, he's one of my favorite n****s. Sometimes when I get writer's block, I say, "What would Kodak say?" And I wouldn't do that to anybody [else]. Was there anybody in Detroit that you were looking up to? Everybody in Detroit used to be doing their thing, with, like, the Doughboyz and Team Eastside, Peezy and Babyface and Vezzo. It was a thing that, like, if you don't listen to them, it's just like ... what you doing? They was just so hot. All of them. The whole little culture of the rise of Detroit. Can you talk about how you started actually rapping? Just meeting Ray through mutual friends and knowing each other through the streets and s***. And then he heard a few of my songs and told me to take it a little more serious. Started going to the studio way more, being around the songs getting made. When I made "Rusty" and "Wilt," he was just like, "Man this s*** gotta go out, bro. It need to get put out." Do you feel like there's a certain type of intangible that people can never really replicate about your sound? 'Cause I feel like a lot of people are doing the sound, but they just don't sound like you or Ray. You ain't s*** till you get copied, bro. You ain't shit till you get — what they call — sampled. The way you rap on "Law N Order" and just the way you rap in general, it feels so dense yet laid-back at once. I just be punching in, thinking of the bars. It's just, like, free. It ain't really nothing deep about it. Do you ever come up with a punch line and you save it for later, or is it all on the spot? Nah, I don't write down anything. With the hype around GANGER, you're like Carti before the mixtape. Everybody's waiting for this. I don't think I ever told nobody this, but one of my producer homies named D. Hill — he passed away — he was working with Carti. This was a couple months before he passed away and s***. He a diamond producer though, rest in peace my n****, man, he produced, "working on the weekend like usual" ["Life is Good" by Future and Drake], he made that beat so I just want to say rest in peace my n****. He took me to meet Carti and s***. It was just crazy because I'm a huge Carti fan. And [Carti] like, "You wanna listen to the Red deluxe?" I'm like, "Hell yeah!" [laughs] I'm just in my own world, I'm just smoking, like damn! [Carti] never dropped it. But he played like six songs. Then he was like, "Play me some of your s***!" I had just got done shooting the video to "A and W" and s***, so I played him a few songs, and I played him "A and W." And he like, "Man that s*** hard as f*** right there!" He made me wanna put out "A and W" faster, like, damn Carti just said that b**** sweet! I played a couple songs, but he was like, "That one hard as f***." But my partner D. Hill made the beat to "A and W" too. I feel like out of probably any rapper besides Carti right now, I've never seen fans more rabid for unreleased music than they are with yours. It's more so songs that I've listened to on [Instagram] Live, but it is crazy though, 'cause I don't know nobody other than Carti like that either. And it's like, all songs that's leaked, we know they leaked. It ain't no song on YouTube that I don't know that's leaked. I know if I played it on Live. I know if I sent it to a friend who played it on Live. Any song that's leaked, I know. Every leak is accounted for. And I know which ones shouldn't be out. There's nothing on YouTube that I can say, "This shouldn't be out." There's one song on this early version of the album I heard called ["Weekend"] — the beat almost reminds me of some old Wiz. I did that song recently. It was from a thing I got tagged in, look. [Plays a beat off Instagram]. I did that b**** the same night he sent it. Do you envision stepping back from rapping and doing other stuff? I wanna be an actor. I want to be like Jamie Foxx or muf***in' Adam Sandler. I want to get so famous I could work on Jimmy Fallon. Like, it'd be Late Night with Veeze, and I'm in the suit when I get older. Who would you be booking for guests? I'd put muf***in' Jeff Bezos on there. People that I would want to sit down and talk to. What would you wanna talk to Jeff Bezos about? I would love to say sarcastic s*** to some of the richest people in the world. I feel like somebody like Kendrick Lamar who may seem kind of serious, I would wanna sit him down and see him joke. Michigan rap is some of the funniest music, I feel. Some of the dudes in your scene could be comedians if they wanted to. I mean, you could. Rio [Da Yung OG] definitely could. I believe it. Rio really funny. He really have you laughin' like a muf***er. Swear to God. All my n****s, though. Ray have a n**** crying, for real. Even my famous partners, who people don't get to see how funny they is all the time, that s*** be crazy, bruh. It's just so much that people can't say and they gotta get stuff off their mind ... it become the funniest s***. [Laughs] Wait, are you talking about Future? He in the Top 3. Swear to God. Like I'd put Future on Jimmy Fallon. Future funny as hell. My times I've been with him, he dumb as me! Like, how you see him with the memes or something, he really do that s***! He do that s*** every three seconds, I swear to God. I see why they just make a meme out of all his s***, dog. He's really funny like that. There's so many things that he tweet [where] he just don't add the laugh emoji but he really trying to be funny. People take it crazy, no cap. I want people to know that, he don't be putting "lol" or nothing but he be laughing. He be joking y'all. Well now I'm just gonna laugh at all Future tweets. You got to. It's all LOL, gang. Just put it in yourself and you gon' know. What has Future taught you? One day we was in the studio — me and Ray was doing songs and s***. Future was just in there with us and s***. And we were just making songs, change the beat, making songs, change the beat. And Future was like, "Y'all don't go to the studio every day, do y'all?" And me and Ray look up like, "Damn, we don't." And he like, "I know y'all don't 'cause I do." Future probably make 10 to 20 songs a day, and he rich as hell. He gon' rap sun-up to sundown, he rich as hell. So [if] we want to be on his level, we got to step it up. What do you think it takes to grow a fanbase like yours? It gotta become a cool thing. Some of the homage just come from [listening to you] being a cool thing to do. For instance, if my famous partners post me, it could be somebody who a fan of them who really didn't used to listen to me. But they see bro post me, they're like, "Oh, hold on, listening to Veeze is the cool thing to do," and hop on the train of that. Do you think there's something about this type of scene that you guys have cultivated that other regions can learn from? There's some rappers who [are] just not that talented but they just know how to be famous. But if the fans and the people feel like it's undeniable, that's just what it is. When listening to you become the cool thing to do, ain't nothing else nobody could do.

When Jerry Leader was growing up, he made himself a toy set of DJ equipment. Two empty cereal boxes were the turntables. For the records, he cut circles out of cardboard. The needle, a plastic spoon. He would sing to himself, "mixing" the tracks. Leader grew up in an 18-story apartment building in the Bronx, New York City, during the 1970s and 1980s, with his parents and eight siblings. The address was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. It's a tall, unremarkable high-rise overlooking an expressway. But he says the building, and his unit, were always filled with music. "I wouldn't pick another place in the world to have a childhood life. It was beautiful," says Leader, who is now 56. "My whole life revolved around music." It was also home to an innovative young DJ who Jerry Leader often saw in performance. That DJ rocked a modest party for fellow teenagers on Aug. 11, 1973 in a small community room on the first floor; he was 18 at the time. That event is now commonly celebrated as the birth of hip-hop. In the 50 years since that party, hip-hop spread around the world. It has seeped into almost every facet of culture, from runway fashion to professional sport. It is inextricable from modern popular music. It is silly, of course, to think of such sprawling impact as contained within one moment of creation. That isn't to say that hip-hop's nascent stage was not exploding with potential. "I think there was a need for a back story because hip-hop got so big that people just needed to have a grand story for such a grand culture," says Jay Quan, a hip-hop historian. At the center of that grand story is Clive Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc. By August of 1973, he had already learned a fair bit about the art of disc jockeying. "My sister gave a party to go back to school," Herc said with a laugh in a recent interview. He's 68 now. "We rented the [community room] and it caught on." Cindy Campbell, Herc's younger sister, threw that party because she wanted to be able to buy new clothes for the upcoming school year. Admission was 25 cents for girls, and 50 cents for boys. Today, that community room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue remains relatively unchanged from what it looked like in the '70s, according to Jerry Leader. It has low ceilings, a small kitchen and storage closets off to one side. There's no plaque or memorabilia — nothing to suggest that a musical revolution began in this space. Leader was too young to attend this particular party — he was 6 at the time — but grew up hearing about it. He points out where the action would have been. "Herc was set up in a closet there with his music, and they all jammed out here," Leader says. "This is it." "Everybody that talks about Herc's parties back then talks about two things," says Jeff Chang, author of the definitive hip-hop history Can't Stop Won't Stop. "They talk about the intensity, the pure sound of the sound system — but they also talk about the music that Herc played." Herc, who emigrated from Jamaica when he was 12, had seen and internalized the often competitive culture of traveling Jamaican sound systems. ("I was into sound," he told us.) He'd also absorbed much of the record collection of his father, an avid music collector. As a DJ, he prided himself on his variety and programming, including rare and unreleased records he acquired. ("I play a little bit of everything, you know what I'm saying?") But it wasn't just the music that he played — it was also how he played it. "He would just focus in on the percussive breakdowns, where the crowds went wild," Chang says. Herc noted that dancers were especially energized during the brief drum-beat or rhythm section interludes of funk and soul records — often called "breaks." He developed a technique where he'd play the break from one record, then immediately play just the break from another record on his other turntable, then cue up another break on his first turntable ... and on and on. He also figured out how to use his two turntables to loop a single break with two copies of the same record. He's referred to these techniques as the "merry-go-round." "The best part of the records, I went to it," Herc said in our phone conversation. "I go right to the yolk." Any of these merry-go-rounds would have formed just a tiny part of his Aug. 11, 1973 set. But for dancers, what was once just a six-second drum solo could now last a lot longer. Over time, partygoers developed dance styles to these extended breaks. They became known as b-boys and b-girls – and the thing they were doing became b-boying, or breaking, or breakdancing. And as the night wore on, Herc and his friend Coke La Rock would talk over the beats. "They're seeing folks in the party, their friends, and they'll shout people out, they'll do it in these funny little rhymes," Chang says. "And these rhymes develop into more rhymes, right? You know, shouts and cries that are basically about urging the party to get higher and higher. So they keep on kind of evolving that and that actually turns into rap." Between the people on the mic emceeing, the b-boys and b-girls going wild, and DJ Kool Herc featuring the breaks, many point to this party as the one that started it all. "I mean the beautiful thing about this is we're talking about a house party that maybe had at tops approaching a hundred folks, including the kids and the parents who are in the room. And this sort of extended family gathering is now looked back upon as the birth of hip-hop. It's kind of mind-boggling," Chang says. In Can't Stop, Won't Stop Chang writes: "It has become myth, a creation myth, this West Bronx party at the end of the summer in 1973." And it's been the subject of some debate over the years. "If you notice, other genres of music generally don't have this kind of back story," Jay Quan says. "You know, nobody says the day that, you know, this blues player strummed his guitar a certain way, rock 'n' roll was born." It isn't that this party in 1973 didn't take place – but Jay Quan and other historians point out that some of the same innovations were going on at other parties in other places. At the time, this party-culture phenomenon didn't even have a name — the term "hip-hop" wouldn't be coined for several more years — and most people, even the ones involved in it, were not considering its future. Jay Quan puts it this way: "It was poor, urban people kind of making lemonade out of lemons." The Bronx was at a low point in the early 1970s. Over previous decades, redlining, urban renewal schemes, and highway development sent a once-diverse working-class community into economic collapse. In November 1972, The New York Times analyzed census data, reporting that The Bronx had "the smallest slice of prosperity and the largest proportion of poor families among the 19 counties of the tristate metropolitan region and among all 62 counties of New York State." New York City as a whole was facing a fiscal crisis — which it used to justify disinvestment from policing, sanitation and firefighting resources in areas like The Bronx. It became easier and more lucrative for many landlords to burn down old, abandoned apartment buildings for insurance money than to maintain them for people to live. In the late 1960s, youth gangs surged — and violence escalated to the point where the gangs organized their own peace accord in 1971. For kids in this environment, one thing they could do for fun was go to block parties — and get into the music. "They were young people entertaining themselves, perhaps trying to stay out of trouble," says Jay Quan. "They couldn't get into, you know, the more sophisticated clubs like Studio 54 and places like that." A lot of the kids were too young. But also you needed to dress a certain way for those clubs, and generally needed a certain amount of wealth. So the DJ scene in the Bronx grew. And Kool Herc was at the center of it. Herc's parties spilled out of that tiny, first-floor rec room, and into places like the public park right down the street. It's an asphalt space, no grass, a little bigger than a basketball court, sandwiched in between 1520 Sedgwick and another high-rise. Herc would set up his big sound system on one end, and play for hours. The park was at the bottom of a basin, carrying Herc's sound through the neighborhood like a funnel. People would walk toward the music, coming to join the party. "I mean, boom boom, his speakers, you could feel them on the bottom of your feet, the bass," Jerry Leader remembers, pointing to his shoes. "And this long block, you could hear the music all the way down." For the next few years, through the mid '70s, Herc's reputation grew. He moved to larger parks; got gigs in clubs; inspired other DJs who furthered his innovations with breaks. People in other parts of New York were starting to find out — including music journalist and filmmaker Nelson George, who was an intern at Billboard in 1978. George was one of the first to write about DJ Kool Herc, after seeing a flyer at a record store near Manhattan's Times Square for a show Herc was putting on in the Bronx. "There were a bunch of kids kind of hanging out, and eventually a van pulls up and a bunch of guys get out," George says. "They pull out a card table, a cable. And there's some speakers, pretty big speakers. And I'd never seen this at the time — they went to the light lamp and they unscrewed the base of the lamp and they took this industrial thing and hooked it into the light from the city. And then pulled it through the fence and set up their equipment using electricity from the light. And that guy was Kool Herc." George went on to write that Herc was a "musical innovator of the turntables ... his reputation as a party master in the Bronx ... unsurpassed." "For me to say that, all I can think about now is that that must have struck me. It struck me as really different from everything else I was hearing," George says. And he noticed something else: younger people were watching, intent on learning how Herc did what he did. "They're seeing this stuff in real time and they're like, 'Oh, two turntables,' you know," he recalls. "You can see how it spread because it was accessible to teenagers and kids and, you know, sparked their imaginations." DJ dreams were spreading. Expensive DJ equipment was still a limiting factor. That began to change one night in July of 1977, when a massive blackout hit New York City. Amid the widespread looting, some rushed into electronics stores. "People had turntables. People had speakers. People had mixers," George says. "And so there's an argument to be made that the proliferation of this equipment around the city in the hands of young people, it spread that hip-hop DJ culture around." New crews popped up almost overnight — and not just in the Bronx. And real competition started too, as every crew aimed to get the attention of an ever-growing crowd of fans. That same year, Herc himself pulled back from performing, after being stabbed at a club gig. "Everybody is innovating and doing things in their own kind of way," says historian Jeff Chang. "The dances have changed. The kids who are coming into it now, they're younger, they're hungry. They want to put their stamp on it. And at some point, this overtakes what Herc built." Debora Hooper was 14 years old back in 1977, after the blackout. She was living in the South Bronx, bored in her room on the 19th floor of her apartment building one summer day, when she heard music floating through her open window. She walked down to a nearby park to find a group of boys DJing and emceeing, and eventually asked if she could get on the mic. She became Debbie D — later MC Debbie D, when she went out on her own as a solo female rapper in the '80s. She's known as one of the pioneers of early hip-hop — along with DJ Kool Herc and a handful of other artists. She remembers that in the earliest days of this movement, few saw it as a viable career. "Me and all of the pioneers are sitting there trying to figure out, well, what are you going to do after high school?" she says. "You're not doing this, because there was no money. Nobody saw a future in hip-hop in '79 and '80." That's obviously changed. For Debbie and other early pioneers — most of whom never had a real record deal or saw major financial gains — the success of hip-hop is a little bittersweet. "I think it's great. I mean, people have to get a living in any way that they can get a living," she says. "The only issue that I have with it is that everybody is profiting off of hip-hop but the pioneers, those of us that really laid the foundation to it." Many have found ways to stay involved in the culture. MC Debbie D is an artist-in-residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, teaching rap and emceeing for kids, and also teaching hip-hop education at New Jersey public schools. Her collection of flyers from the days before the arrival of rap records represents what she calls "the only authentic documents" of these early days. Fifty years after the now-fabled party, DJ Kool Herc also wants those who make hip-hop to remember to be custodians of the culture — to stop the senseless violence associated with it. He reminds hip-hop to "look out for your health" — to "eat right" — to learn from his example, that "you're going to get old, too." "Hip-hop, you've come a long way," he said. "Give back to hip-hop. Give back." Unlike the next generation of DJs he inspired — preeminent among them Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa — Herc would not capitalize on the advent of commercial hip-hop recording, which started at the end of the '70s. Still, in our conversation, Herc expressed gratitude for those who have taken note of his contribution, and gratitude for what hip-hop has given him. And he repeatedly insisted that while his scene may have been informed by many aspects of culture in the Bronx – it was not, in his understanding, a violent or segregated scene. He said it wasn't a "Black thing" or a "white thing" or a Puerto Rican thing. It was full of youth, and energy, and potential. "Everybody get in, do your thing," he said. "You get in, you party."

In Uttar Pradesh, India, where I grew up, temperatures can soar as high as 120 degrees in May and June. But very few people have access to an air conditioner. With a per capita income of around a $1,000 a year, many people in this part of the country can't afford to buy an A/C unit or pay the power bills that come with using one. So how do people keep cool? That's a question that people are asking themselves as the world faces unprecedented heat waves, from the U.S. Southwest and Mexico to India to China. CNN reports that "China has been gripped by scorching heat waves for weeks, which authorities said had arrived earlier and been more widespread and extreme than in previous years." In some parts of the country, people are sheltering in air raid tunnels to stay cool. And it's a deadly phenomenon. The World Health Organization reports that "from 1998-2017, more than 166,000 people died due to heatwaves." Yet people in India and in other countries across the Global South have long figured out ways to deal with the horrible heat. And so, I'd like to share a few tips on how to stay cool that I've learned from my upbringing and elders in Uttar Pradesh. Some of the advice is just what you'd think – like drinking lots of liquids and staying out of the sun – but others might surprise you. I know that each of these tips on their own may seem trivial. But as a heat wave researcher, I can tell you that done together, they can really help the body cool down. The key is to be mindful of the power of heat – and remain prepared to prevent its adverse effects. And remember, upon seeing any signs of heatstroke — like fever, headache, nausea, confusion or weakness — call an ambulance ASAP and get medical help. Use ice packs while waiting to be treated at the hospital. Seriously, don't delay. Heatstroke can be fatal. Here are a few tried-and-tested tips from India on how to stay cool without an air conditioner. (Also: We want to hear from you! Scroll to the end of this story to find out how to share tips from your culture on how to cope with heat.)

Drink lots of liquids — it doesn't have to be water!

There are all kinds of wonderful drinks in India that people can make at home or pick up at a street market vendor. In addition to water, we quench our thirst with fruity drinks like sugarcane juice, coconut water, a tangy, raw mango juice called aam ka pana and an apple juice called bel ka sharbat. We also like cooling, milk-based drinks like lassi, a yogurt beverage popular in the summertime, and buttermilk. The key is to drink plenty of fluids to replenish the electrolytes lost in sweat and keep your body hydrated.

Find a cool spot to chill out.

Seek out the coolest parts of the building where you live and make that the place where you sleep or hang out. Because heat rises, lower floors in a multi-story house are cooler. Verandas are shady and airy. During the day, block out the sunlight with heavy curtains. Turn on any fans you have. And don't be afraid to move the furniture around in your quest for coolness. Back in Uttar Pradesh, we used to scoot our beds closer to the windows so we could catch a breeze while we slept. If it becomes impossibly stuffy indoors, move outdoors and lay in a hammock. Air created from swinging helps cool the body down. As a kid, I remember that mango orchards were the best for hanging out, as the dense foliage there provided maximum shade coverage.

Use water in creative ways.

In India, we have a number of contraptions to manage heat without an air conditioner. That includes khus — grass curtains hung over doors and windows and sprayed with water. The curtains convert the dry wind outside into a fragrant, cool, damp breeze as it blows into the house. And the ubiquitous swamp cooler, which works best in low-humidity settings. Also known as an evaporative cooler, this electrical device passes a room's air over water-saturated pads, which cools down the air, then blows that air back into the room. These devices are cheaper than air conditioners and use less energy. You can even make one yourself. Even if you don't have khus curtains or a swamp cooler, you can find other ways to use water to regulate your body temperature. Take a cold bath or shower. Or take a light towel, called a gamchha in Hindi, dampen it and wear it around your neck or on your head like a scarf. This wet garb is omnipresent even now among men in the hinterlands and small towns. You can also play with water. When I was a kid in India, I'd have water balloon fights with neighborhood kids. Or we'd fill a tub with water and splash it on each other in the backyard.

Take a break.

During the hottest parts of the day, try not to burn energy or exhaust yourself by going out, exercising or standing outside, because the scorching sunlight and hot air will make you hotter. Instead, do what I did in Uttar Pradesh: chill at home or take an afternoon siesta. If you have to work and have a flexible schedule, try to perform your duties in the cooler hours of the day. Farmers in my state, for example, schedule work in the early mornings and late evenings. And markets close in the hot afternoons but remain open until late in the night.

Wear airy and light-colored clothing.

Choose airy cotton fabrics that don't trap body heat, and colors like white, yellow and light blue that reflect light off the body. Darker colors absorb heat much faster, heating up our bodies. In Uttar Pradesh, many people wear a light-colored kurta, a loose, collarless shirt, and pajama, a lightweight drawstring trouser.

A/C is great ... until the power goes out

In 2010, my family in Uttar Pradesh finally got an air conditioner. They say it's great for keeping cool, and they keep it on all day in the summer. But their reliance on A/C makes their willingness to tolerate heat even more difficult when the power goes out – which happens often in India. So they go back to the age-old practices that I just shared here to beat the heat.

Your turn: Share tips from your culture on how to cope with heat

Did you grow up without air conditioner in a hot country? How did you deal with the heat? Email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line "Heat hacks," and we may feature your story on NPR.org. Please include your name and location. Submissions close on Tuesday, July 18. Read a sampling of previous reader responses on this topic here here.

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Dr. Gulrez Shah Azhar is a Seattle-based Aspen New Voices fellow who is researching the health impacts of heat. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health.

Northwestern University fired head baseball coach Jim Foster on Thursday, days after the university let go of head football coach Pat Fitzgerald amid an investigation into hazing allegations. Foster was "relieved of his duties effective immediately," Athletic Director Derrick Gragg said in an announcement posted to the university's athletics page. Gragg did not give details behind Foster's termination said "many factors were considered" before the decision was made. "Nothing will ever be more important to Northwestern than providing its students a place that allows them to develop in the classroom, in the community, and in competition at the absolute highest level, and building a culture which allows our staff to thrive," Gragg said. "As the Director of Athletics, I take ownership of our head coaching hires and we will share our next steps as they unfold," he added. Assistant coach Brian Anderson, a former MLB player who won a World Series ring with the Chicago White Sox in 2005, will take over as interim coach. While it is unclear what led to Foster's termination as head coach, both The Chicago Tribune and 670 The Score reported that Foster allegedly led a toxic culture within the baseball program, as his alleged bullying and verbally abusive behavior led to a human resources investigation by the university. 670 The Score reported that Foster also allegedly made racist statements and discouraged players from reporting their injuries. When asked about this allegation by the Chicago radio station he denied all allegations, calling them "ridiculous." Both current and former players and alumni told The Tribune that they alerted university officials of Foster's behavior before the start of the 2023 season. The university's investigation found "sufficient evidence" that Foster engaged in bullying and abusive behavior, The Tribune reported. A Northwestern athletics spokesperson declined NPR's request for comment regarding the investigation and Foster's termination. Foster was hired in June 2022 by the university, which went 24-27 this past season. Before his tenure at Northwestern, Foster was the head coach at West Point, where he led the Black Knights to four consecutive league titles and NCAA playoff tournament appearances. News of Foster's termination comes days after the university parted ways with its long-time football coach, Pat Fitzgerald, following an investigation into hazing allegations. The university announced it had previously suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay after reviewing the investigation's executive summary. Though the university said there was no "sufficient" evidence that coaches knew about the misconduct from Fitzgerald, University President Michael Schill said Fitzgerald "should have known." "Northwestern University is an extraordinary university with an exceptional athletics program. I am committed to ensuring that the misconduct that occurred in our football program never happens again anywhere in our university community," Schill said in a letter to the community. Northwestern has yet to name Fitzgerald's replacement.

[audio mp3="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2023/07/20230714_atc_student_loan_forgiveness_is_on_the_way_for_more_than_800000_borrowers.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1013&d=268&p=2&story=1187660793&ft=nprml&f=1187660793"][/audio] More than 804,000 federal student loan borrowers are in for a pleasant surprise. While the Supreme Court scuttled President Biden's efforts at widespread debt forgiveness, these borrowers are about to get an email from the U.S. Department of Education, notifying them that their debts will soon be automatically erased. The forgiveness is the result of a promise made last year by the Biden administration in response to years of complaints, lawsuits and an NPR investigation that found that many long-time borrowers who should have qualified for loan forgiveness under the rules of the government's income-driven repayment plans (IDR) hadn't received it because of mismanagement by the department and loan servicers. "For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a Friday press release announcing the forgiveness. The move will erase $39 billion in federal student loan debt. Borrowers, advocates and journalists have warned for years of these IDR failures. While IDR rules have long promised a borrower's loan balance will be forgiven after 20 years of payments, a March 2021 report by borrower advocates found that, at the time, 4.4 million borrowers had been repaying their loans for at least 20 years – but only 32 had had debts canceled under IDR. Why? One huge problem: These IDR plans, meant as a safety net for low-income borrowers, were difficult to enroll in. So loan servicing companies often put financially distressed borrowers into long-term forbearance instead, a process that the companies' call center workers could more easily navigate over the phone. Forbearance may offer a short-term reprieve from payments, but interest continues to accrue. In April 2022, an NPR investigation, built on unreleased Education Department documents, revealed yet more problems with the department's handling of these IDR plans, including that several loan servicing companies weren't actually tracking borrowers' progress toward forgiveness (which the department knew) and that payment histories were often damaged and incomplete after borrowers were transferred from one servicer to another, a common practice. In response, the Biden administration pledged last spring to conduct a one-time "account adjustment" for federal student loan borrowers, giving them retroactive credit towards loan forgiveness for months spent in long-term forbearance. Even borrowers who were never in an IDR plan are now receiving or soon will receive retroactive credit toward forgiveness, "regardless of whether payments were partial or late, the type of loan, or the repayment plan," according to the department's release. This sweeping review of borrower accounts is far from over and will continue into 2024. Friday's $39 billion adds considerable heft to the Biden administration's previous debt relief efforts, now totaling at least $116 billion, and illustrates how the Education Department can offer targeted relief to vulnerable borrowers even after the Supreme Court's recent rebuke.

NPR Music is celebrating Black Music Month with an array of brand new Tiny Desk concerts. Together, these artists represent the past, present and future of Black music. This month of carefully curated shows is a celebration of Black artists expressing themselves in ways we've never seen before, and of the Tiny Desk's unique way of showcasing that talent. "WTF is a Tiny Desk and no!" are the words that led to one of the most publicized journeys any musician has taken to get to NPR headquarters. That was Juvenile's response to Twitter user @theylovemyke's request for him to play a Tiny Desk concert back in April. His response ignited Black Twitter, launching a barrage of tweets and reposts of favorite performances at the Desk, as fans implored the "T.C. soldier" to reconsider. His viral reconsideration led to a few DMs, which led to a few phone calls, and the date was set. Juve, like some rappers in his class, had never heard of our little nook in Washington, D.C., but he soon found out. The pressure to deliver was palpable in the planning stages but as the band was assembled, my expectations were exceeded. Tiny Desk alumni and New Orleans natives Trombone Shorty and Alvin Ford were brought into the fold. Another Tiny Desk vet from New Orleans, Jon Batiste, flew in from London just to be a part of the set. Juvenile sourced The Amours from right here in D.C. to handle background vocals, along with string players from the Louisiana Philharmonic for the grand finale. The architect of the Juvenile/Cash Money Records sound, DJ Mannie Fresh, became the glue that pieced it all together. The result was one of the most rambunctious experiences at the Desk. The Hot Boy coasted through highlights from a decades-long, groundbreaking career, concluding with a performance of "Back That Azz Up," so exuberant that the audience demanded an encore and the band obliged. A Tiny Desk first. SET LIST

• "Intro (feat. Mannie Fresh)"
• "400 Degreez (feat. Mannie Fresh)"
• "Bling Bling (feat. Mannie Fresh)"
• "Ha"
• "Set It Off"
• "Slow Motion"
• "Rodeo (feat. The Amours)"
• "I Need A Hot Girl (feat. Mannie Fresh)"
• "Project Bitch (feat. Mannie Fresh)"
• "Back That Azz Up (feat. Mannie Fresh)"

MUSICIANS

• Juvenile: vocals
• Mannie Fresh: vocals, effects, keys
• Alvin Ford: music director/drums
• Josh Connelly: guitar
• DJ Raymond: bass
• Brandon Butler: keys
• BK Jackson: saxophone
• Trombone Shorty: trombone
• Kevin Woods: trumpet
• Jon Batiste: melodica
• Jakiya Ayanna: vocals
• Shaina Aisha: vocals
• Hannah Yim: violin
• Jake Fowler: cello

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Bobby Carter
• Director/Editor: Joshua Bryant
• Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin
• Creative Director: Bob Boilen
• Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Maia Stern, Sofia Seidel, Michael Zamora
• Audio Assistant: Kwesi Lee
• Production Assistant: Ashley Pointer
• Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Hazel Cills
• Photographer: Catie Dull
• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
• Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

A day after performing "Hotter Than Hell" on The Tonight Show, rising pop star Dua Lipa performed another one of her songs, "Thinking Bout You," for a much smaller audience: our Noteworthy video crew. Enjoy this extra from our Noteworthy documentary on Dua Lipa and be sure to watch the entire documentary here.

"I've never really had a religious experience, in a religious place," the Atlanta rapper Killer Mike says to begin the title track of his 2012 album, R.A.P. Music. "Closest I've ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music. Rap music is my religion." The intent in his voice doesn't read as blasphemy. It's more a confession: that his spirituality is not only unconventional, but profane. After comparing his music to various holy hallmarks — gospel music, church, calling it "player Pentecostal" — he offers his career up on the altar as a sacrifice despite his sin: "So I pray to the Lord He spare me, and I make it by and by / And I help souls stay out of Hell with what I testify / And maybe when I grab that microphone and never lie / That'll merit that He spare me, I won't have to feel that fire." It is a telling arrangement for the artist, the opposite of a Faustian bargain, where he keeps his soul in exchange for spreading the good word. How he has fared on that mission might depend on who you ask. Mike has cut a particularly controversial figure as he's transitioned from Dungeon Family member to half of the crossover duo Run the Jewels. Plenty of rappers aren't scrutinized for what they represent outside of their music, but Mike is zealous expressing his ideas and dogmatic in their defense, not unlike most preacher men. Faith, in fact, is the undertone in much of his music, which often thinks of Mike as a vessel for God in one sense or another, as "R.A.P. Music" does. But that music has been noncommittal about his actual theology. (It's unclear how literal he was being about starting his own church during an experiment on his Netflix show.) To this point, Mike's musical relationship to his faith could be summed up by one facetious line on RTJ4: "Not a holy man, but I'm moral in my perverseness." God has frequently appeared in his lyrics, but mostly as a means to caution and counsel others, or as a barometer for how far he has strayed from a righteous path. Michael, Killer Mike's first solo album in nearly 10 years, casts his faith in a new light — as essential to his story and his mission. Before, God was often inaccessible in the world of Mike's music, turning a blind eye to the terrors its people faced ("I used to pray to God, but I think he took a vacation / 'Cause now the state of Cali is ran by these corporations," he rapped on "No Save Point"). On this album, he is not just adamant and occasionally God-fearing, but prayerful. He is a sinner born again, one for whom the holy spirit has become a lifeline: "Born at Grady, a bastard baby, the single lady / I beat the odds; without God, I probably wouldn't have made it," he explains on "NRich." There are still flashes of the old cynicism — on "Don't Let the Devil," he raps, "Tell the deacon we ain't speakin', need money, his prayers worthless" — but for the first time in his career, Mike sounds like more of a believer than a skeptic. Faith, particularly Christian faith, has never been far from rap's purview. It has tended to lack the clarity of thought afforded other rap staples, manifesting crudely even when — from "Only God Can Judge Me" to "Jesus Walks" — it connects commercially. Some of the music it generates is blasphemous ("Ten Crack Commandments," anyone?). Much of it is bad, or at least corny in its presentation. But when effective, it can function as both a powerful narrative device and a litmus test for personal principles. When you understand what an artist believes, particularly about the status of their immortal soul and the resulting moral responsibilities, it becomes clearer what the characters in their music are after and how they define (or even justify) the lives they live. Christian iconography outlined the career of the late DMX, and on his debut album, It's Dark and Hell is Hot, he is constantly waging war with the devil. Jay-Z, who has played the sacrilegious outlaw (See: "D'Evils," "Lucifer"), leans into that characterization on 2007's "Pray," where he all but asks God to become an accessory to his crimes. And yet, underneath the amorality is a small show of penitence, the rare display of fealty to a greater power from one of hip-hop's God MCs. More recently, many of the biggest stars have dedicated significant space in their discographies to reckoning with religion. Kendrick Lamar's music has always been underscored by his faith, but 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly wrestled with that spirituality surreally, through allegory and metaphor, like a Bible story — communing with a God disguised as a panhandler and personifying the devil's temptations through a character named Lucy. "My rights, my wrongs; I write 'til I'm right with God," he rapped on "Alright." By 2017's DAMN., he seemed spent in pursuit of that goal: "I feel like the whole world want me to pray for 'em / But who the f*** prayin' for me?" he asked on "FEEL." Conversely, at the height of his power, Chance the Rapper was playing the altar boy, replicating a feel-good devotional music that was nearly scriptural in verse and reference, peaking with his spot on "Ultralight Beam" and his mixtape Coloring Book. Other offerings have been more superficial. Drake's No. 1 hit "God's Plan" gestures vaguely at His influence with a half-hearted, monotone performance. And then, of course, there is Kanye West's late-career crusade, which feels less like ministry work and more like agitprop for Ye himself as a messianic figure. Killer Mike has been rapping about God nearly as long as Kanye, with nearly as messy a relationship. What he seems to believe, or at least what he confesses in his music, has shifted over time, aided by his steady improvement as a storyteller. A powerful orator, Mike has always performed as if on the pulpit: He has a voice that could rattle stained glass, with a fire-and-brimstone delivery to match. His timbre, spirit and mannerisms can command the attention of a congregation, but, for many years, protest came before preaching in his songs. "If Jesus came back, Mother, where you think he'd be? / Probably in these streets with me," he raps on "God in the Building," from 2008's I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II, with the impassioned rhetoric of a great televangelist. It's a recurring theme in his music: Jesus in the hood, not just a miracle worker but a social worker and community organizer. If Jesus is in the streets, it follows that Mike would make himself an enemy of organized religion. Just as his raps have frequently targeted world leaders for failing to serve those they represent, they target church leaders for abusing positions of power. "I don't trust the church or the government," he says at the end of "Untitled." On "That's Life II," he takes aim at molester priests and megachurch celebrities filling their coffers. In his songs, religious figureheads are spiritual middlemen, putting a price on prayer and lying about their influence on the returns. "A pope is a fraud, a church is a lie / A queen is the same damn thing, you should pray to your fake god that she die," he raps on "Angel Duster." More recently, he literally transformed the crucifixion story into a parable on state-sanctioned violence and anti-socialism: "Never forget in the story of Jesus the hero was killed by the state," he raps on "walking in the snow." In Mike's early music, advocacy is God's will, and activism is evangelism. But even with God moving in him, His reach and Mike's patience seemed to have clear limits, causing a buildup of fury he would redirect at anyone he had a gripe with: rap rivals, of course, but also moguls on the Forbes list, the "sucker s***" on TV, dirty cops and the Reagan administration. From there, the lines would blur: Being a holy champion would take a backseat to being an agitator, fire-starter and fully loaded marksman. Two tenets of his philosophy would come to transcend all else: a gun is more direct than divine intervention, and people must deliver themselves from evil. Now, after years of keeping religion at bay, Mike uses it to set the table for Michael — and in divulging some of his most personal stories, recounting the particulars of his struggle and his rise, his purpose seems to come into focus. He has always seen rap as a higher calling, but now he seems to literally be positioning himself as the evangelist promised on "R.A.P. Music." In so doing, he seems to define his own ministry, one that not only encompasses decisions he's made in the past but colors his music's politics. "Bless all the felons that handled the raw / F*** all the tellers that ran to the law / Watch out for the hitters with sticks in the car / My name is Michael, I'm down by law," he raps to end the opener, establishing the parameters of his doctrine. Michael is no gospel album, but it is rooted in a Southern religious identity. It thinks about Christianity as inextricable from local philosophy; even if you aren't a regular churchgoer, you have been touched by it. Some likely have a subconscious impulse to think of the album as self-righteous, and while rap bombast and Christian pomp do align in some regards, they are ideologically at odds. Mike picks and chooses which commandments to obey, but it is in that way that his faith is most real; practically every adherent to every religion practices in ways that feel most in tune with what is pragmatic in their own situation. In his life, some of the piety is aesthetic, some of it is conditional, and some of it is confessional. There are a lot of hammond organ and choir fills — symbols of the Southern church. Mike recalls dropping his babies at the church nursery, and he has an altar to his grandmother where he asks her to pray for his generation. He knows the preachers and the thugs. Though usually cheeky, here he is close to reverent, blessed to have made it out of the slums. His album is one about the sustaining power of belief, and God as a conduit for positivity. In one section of "Exit 9," Mike remembers his grandmother pleading with him to be "saved in Jesus' name," but he wouldn't listen: "I know some of my actions, they was taxin' and I hurt her / But Lord, if she listenin', please let her know I heard her." In that moment, God is flowing both ways, connecting the two of them across time. Listening to his stories of survival, it feels as if his belief was hard won. Most rap spirituality is ultimately a secular spirituality — often explicit and sacrilegious, sure, but also egocentric, bound closer to its profit model than any altruistic ideal. To be fair, churches do make billions annually. Faith is as much an industry as a means of collective expression. But that doesn't mean it can't positively impact those who buy in, however they choose to. The most enriching and interesting music to come out of that decision is the stuff that can somehow tap into the uplifting power of a Sunday service, or grapple with our humanity in ways that illustrate why we look to religion for answers in the first place. Michael does neither, but finds a curious alternative: the autobiography as confessional, using personal history as a means to explore the way God manifests — in individual lives and in the Southern imagination. Across the album, Killer Mike thinks about and applies his Christianity differently. As with most rappers, there is a general thankfulness for the blessings God has bestowed — more in the flexing, Big Sean application of the term than the charmed Chance one — but his spirituality doesn't strictly see divine favor being represented by material gains, and his worship isn't without questions. The God of his music is one that sees and serves the castoffs in society: the junkie, the fiend, the loser. "Now, I only go to churches where they welcome worthless men / Who had to get it out the mud and rise up out the sediment," he raps on "Two Days." Mike, for his part, has become a willing shepherd. But even as he uses his craft to confer the spirituality he talked about feeling as a rap listener a decade ago, there is a sense that the enlightenment he seeks may exist beyond his bars.

[audio mp3="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2023/06/20230625_atc_he_walked_away_from_his_evangelical_roots_to_escape_feeling_suffocated.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1016&aggIds=1175750522&d=969&p=2&story=1183227484&ft=nprml&f=1183227484"][/audio] We all want to feel safe when we're growing up. And in an attempt to make kids feel safe, parents and other adults can sometimes circumscribe a child's life so that they don't come into contact with ideas or people who might make them feel unsafe in some way. I know that was part of the reason my parents sent me to a Baptist elementary school. Yes, they wanted me to have a religious education. But they also wanted to know that, for at least six hours a day, I'd be in a place that reflected their own Christian values. Values they believed would make me a better person, and would keep me safe from the temptations and moral depravity of the secular world. In fifth grade, they moved me to the public school, and it felt just totally wild to me. I could wear pants instead of dresses. Kids talked back to teachers, and the really bad kids wrote curse words on the back of the seats on the bus. I remember saying a prayer for one of them because I was convinced that he was damned to hell after that. It was definitely a transition, but I figured out how to navigate myself outside of my little Baptist school bubble. And at that time, it's what my parents intended. They knew I had to learn how to operate in the real world – full of people with different values and perspectives and life experiences. Jon Ward grew up in a more isolating corner of Christianity. He was raised in an evangelical church in the D.C. area that defined his life, his friends, his family – his whole identity. He was taught never to question the teachings of the Bible, or the judgment of the men who led his church. And he was discouraged from ever engaging in the world outside his religious community. Ward had other plans though. After college, he decided to pursue a career in journalism. It was a choice that would fracture his family. Through his work as a political journalist, Ward learned how to interrogate assumptions, how to question authority, and eventually that meant questioning the church he grew up in — and leaving it altogether. Ward wrote a memoir about this experience. It's called Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation. I wanted to understand what that choice to step away looked like, and the consequences of living with it. Ward's story begins with his parents. They were spiritual seekers. His dad had been a Catholic, his mom a disenchanted Presbyterian, and they were looking for something more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Jon Ward: My parents were both caught up in something called the Jesus Movement or the Jesus Revolution, where a lot of people were looking for something fresh and new in religion. I think they were also disenchanted with the way the country had gone during the late '60s. This new form of Christianity was very informal, a lot of hippie culture involved. They began holding Bible studies in the D.C. area that became very popular. The style was kind of a rock and roll worship service with a full band and then some dynamic preaching. My dad was one of the leaders of this group that was meeting and his high school best friend C.J. Mahaney was one of the top leaders. So that's the world I was born into in 1977 and I was the first infant dedicated at that church. Rachel Martin: Dedicated, like baptized? Ward: No, they might have sprinkled some water on our heads but it was pretty informal. Like, the parents go up on stage and pray over the child essentially. Martin: You write that the worst thing you could be called by an adult member of your church community was "lukewarm." Can you explain that? Ward: This is such an important topic. They would quote a passage of scripture which talks about God literally spitting you out of his mouth if you are lukewarm. It was often used, especially in youth group culture, to essentially communicate to us that we needed to be all in and on fire for God. Martin: And there was a real priority given to the emotional experiences, right? Ward: Yeah. It felt like you had to get caught up in the emotional fervor of the church to not be viewed as lukewarm. Martin: But it started to feel false to you. Can you tell me about the time that the minister of your church placed hands on you and explain what that means? Ward: Sure. I mean, the emotional aspect of it, we conceived of authentic faith as having very strong emotions for God. The moment you referred to took place in the mid '90s. Our church, like a lot of churches in the country at that time, was having services where they would invite people up to the front and people would be prayed for and then people would fall down all under the auspices of a move of the Holy Spirit. And in late high school or early college I went up to be prayed for. My parents I believe were with me and the same pastor who my dad was friends with in high school, C.J. Mahaney, came up and prayed for me. And at a certain point I just felt like it had been going on for a while and I didn't feel anything outside of my body. Martin: So he's putting his hands on you and you're supposed to be feeling something. Ward: Yeah. So I'm waiting for something to happen to me and he kind of nudged my forehead as if a signal to say, "Now is the time for you to go down." Martin: Wait, he nudged you? Ward: Yes. I felt pressure to make it happen. So at a certain point I fall to the ground, people would catch you if that happened, and as I'm in the process of going to the ground I believe I had this feeling of shame that I had faked it. Martin: So where did your faith move from there? There was a juncture where you decided to not be lukewarm anymore and to go all in. Ward: Right. Two years later, I've been in college for two years and I've started to experiment with the really crazy lifestyle of occasionally having a beer. Martin: Because that was not allowed, it was taboo to drink alcohol even though you were of age, right? Ward: Yeah. I felt at the time that God moved on me to grab hold of me and to stop me from going down a path of partying and all that. So I went all in on church. I cut out all my relationships with friends who were not on the same page as me and I spent all my time going to church services. I tried to recreate in my room, in my private life, that same emotional euphoria that my parents felt as young people and that I had felt at times. That became my entire world. Martin: So when you were in this particular chapter and you were really committing your life to the church and your identity as a Christian, how did that jive with the rest of your life? What was it like in your professional life, your dating life? Ward: Well, you've opened up a whole can of worms by asking that. Martin: Let's open it up! Ward: It's important to explain that the theology we were embracing at that time was focused on our own basic badness. And we would call it indwelling sin or original sin, but it led to a very intense focus on what I was doing wrong and a suspicion of my motives in all cases. A lot of us young men, with the encouragement of some of the pastors, were having these meetings where we would talk about how often we had looked at pornography and even greater detail about our sins on the internet. It was not a happy time, Rachel. Martin: You had to share all this in a group, right? Ward: Correct. Sometimes in somebody's kitchen, sometimes at a Starbucks. I remember trying to pull my chair as close as possible to the person next to me so that we could talk as quietly as possible. I was just sitting there thinking, "Why are we doing this in Starbucks again?" I might have wondered why we were doing it all but when you're caught up in something it's hard to pump the brakes. Martin: But it wasn't just the fear of public embarrassment. In the book you describe a self-loathing that came over you when it came to sex or any kind of sexual thought. Ward: Yeah, the vigor which we were encouraged to root out the impurity inside us led to a huge sense of shame anytime I fell short. We would talk about passages of scripture where it talks about how if you look at a woman lustfully you've committed adultery. And we would take that and say, "How much worse is it if you are looking at porn? Basically it's the same as if you had committed adultery." So there's obviously philosophical problems with interpreting that passage too literally, but that's the way we interpreted it. And so you walk around feeling really, really bad about yourself and then you try to work your way back to a place of atonement for your sins. Obviously the teaching is that Christ would have atoned for it but you can't help but try to atone for it yourself. Martin: In 2012, the pastor of your family's church was accused of covering up crimes of child sex abuse. [NOTE: One church member was found guilty, but church leaders deny any cover up and were never charged.] Besides the hideous nature of that crime, what did that revelation uncover for you about how some evangelical congregations operate? Ward: If you are continually operating in a world where you believe God is speaking to you, and as a leader speaking to you in a particular way, and that you have answers about ultimate reality and right and wrong that other people don't have, I think it actually predisposes you to think that you know better than law enforcement or anyone who's not in your world and doesn't think like you. I think a lot of that cover up was them saying, "We're going to handle things internally according to the way we think is best and that's the right thing to do." And they might still think that. Martin: But by this point you had already broken with the church? Ward: Yeah. Martin: Can you tell me what precipitated that? What in the end made you decide that you needed to find your own spiritual path? Ward: That's a good way of putting it. By the time the sex abuse cases issue came to a head in 2012 I had been out of that church for about a decade. I had become exhausted from that cycle of failure and atonement that I described earlier. I also felt a sense of suffocation from being in an environment where everyone thought the same thing and sang in the same chord structure. I've always felt like it was a good thing to be around people who thought differently than I did, who could challenge my thinking. And as a result of working on this book I've come to believe that journalism saved me from fundamentalism. Martin: Can you say more about that? How? Ward: It's taught me that truth is not a set of answers that you begin with and then retroactively fit the questions to. It's something that requires rigor and modesty and a lot of work. And also our recognition that a lot of things that we would like to put in boxes labeled true and false defy our ability to do that. I think fundamentalism is this desire to put answers out of reach of questioning. I think one of the icebreaking statements for me has been a very simple one, it's just: "I could be wrong." I've embraced that over the years and it's been so liberating in many ways. Martin: That idea of certainty, that sort of opens the door to my next question. When Donald Trump came along and white evangelicals painted him as some kind of savior, it was completely confounding to most people in the media and Americans who didn't have a connection to the evangelical church. But this did not shock you. Can you explain why this bizarre marriage between Donald Trump and white evangelicals made sense to you as someone from that world? Ward: I don't know that it did make a ton of sense to be honest. I guess I've come to understand it in retrospect and there are still parts I don't get. There were some evangelicals who painted Trump as God's man, but a lot of evangelicals I knew personally and some public figures were the type that were repulsed by Trump and then came to a place of either trying to ignore politics or in the case of my own family, rationalized their way to embracing him. And then once you get into the general election timeframe of 2016 and beyond I think tribal political identities overtook religious identities. And Trump was very good at provoking outrage, which further solidified his supporter's attachment to him. But there was a process of resignation, then rationalization and then once it was Republican versus Democrat the political identities snapped into place. Martin: How's your faith now? Ward: I still affirm a lot of the same core teachings of Christianity that a lot of evangelicals do, but I hold it with a more open hand and a sense of epistemic modesty. The sense of being aware of how much we don't know and embracing the sense that I could be wrong has given me a more open-handed stance towards faith. I just love the idea that if I say we know it then I've eliminated the need for faith. That to me has become such an exciting thing about faith. I actually don't know if this is true or real and so I'm on a quest to continue onward and upward, as my dad likes to quote C.S. Lewis, in a reliance on that faith. By: Rachel Martin

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, 14 states have banned most abortions, but even more have moved to protect abortion rights in various ways. Eleven states have passed so-called "shield laws," which can safeguard providers and patients against prosecution from other states. And at least 15 municipalities and six state governments allocated nearly $208 million to pay for contraception, abortion and support services according to data provided to NPR by the National Institute for Reproductive Health. Some states have opened new clinics and have become destinations for people seeking an abortion as new research shows just how difficult it has become to get in-person care.

California embraces role as 'sanctuary' state

Following the Dobbs decision, California lawmakers moved quickly to shore up protections for abortions and become a "sanctuary" for people who live in places with new restrictions. Last year, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed new laws to strengthen civil and privacy rights for those who get an abortion and require insurance companies to cover the procedure, along with certain over-the-counter contraceptives. The state also launched a website where people – whether they live in California or not – can find providers, connect with abortion funds for financial aid, and learn about their rights for receiving reproductive care in the state. California was one of several states where voters added abortion protections to the state constitution last November. This year, members of the legislature's Democratic supermajority are looking to build on policies to expand privacy by banning "reverse warrants," which can be used to compel tech companies to reveal the identities of users who have made certain keyword searches or visited a particular location, such as an abortion clinic.

Maryland trains more health care providers

Maryland, like a handful of other solidly Democratic states, rushed to ensure abortion protections since Dobbs. The state legislature appropriated $3.5 million to train health care professionals in reproductive health in order to expand the number of people to provide abortion services in the state. Those funds were delayed by former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and are currently being allocated under Democratic Gov. Wes Moore's administration. During the 2023 legislative cycle, lawmakers voted to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. That still needs final approval from Maryland voters who will decide on the amendment in a referendum during the 2024 election. The state is also trying to hedge further challenges to abortion rights. The Moore administration stockpiled two-and-a-half years' worth of Mifepristone, a drug generally used in combination with another drug to induce abortions, after recent federal cases put the future of the drug's use in jeopardy.

Michigan Democrats, newly in control, repeal 1931 law

In Michigan, the Dobbs decision was a catalyst that helped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic slate sweep the statewide elections in Nov., 2022 – against an admittedly anemic Republican statewide ticket. Democrats won complete control of the legislature for the first time in nearly four decades. Turnout was spurred by a ballot proposal to add an abortion rights amendment to the Michigan Constitution. "We will make Michigan a leader, a place where everyone is respected and protected under the law, a place where women make their own decisions," Whitmer said to a crescendo of cheers at the Democrats' election night party. "A place that protects civil rights and workers' rights and where there's a path for everyone." Democrats used their newfound hegemony in Lansing to formally repeal Michigan's dormant 1931 abortion ban. Earlier last month, Whitmer signed a bill to add reproductive rights to Michigan's civil rights law, which would, among other things, protect women who have had abortions from employment discrimination. That was over the objections of the Catholic Church and some other faith organizations that oppose abortion rights.

Colorado enacts legal protections

Even prior to the end of Roe, Democrats in control of Colorado's government began thinking of how to implement protections for people to get an abortion, and passed a law to cement legal abortion into Colorado law. Following the Dobbs decision, Colorado's governor, Democrat Jared Polis, issued an executive order in July of 2022 giving legal protection to people who come to Colorado for abortions, or to anyone who helps another person cross state lines to obtain the procedure. When state lawmakers convened for their annual legislative session this year, codifying the governor's executive order was a top priority. They passed it as part of a package of laws aimed at ensuring access to abortion, including expanding private insurance coverage for abortions and other reproductive care. Colorado has also set restrictions on how crisis pregnancy centers — which generally seek to convince pregnant women not to abort — can advertise their services, including making claims that they can reverse a medication abortion, a scientifically controversial procedure. Colorado became the first state to effectively outlaw abortion reversal treatment classifying it as "unprofessional conduct." That law is slated to go into effect later this year after state health officials review the science behind it to decide whether it should be considered a "generally accepted standard of practice."

Illinois as a 'midwestern safe haven'

Since the fall of Roe, Illinois has welcomed an influx of out-of-state patients seeking abortions, becoming what advocates call a "Midwestern safe haven" for reproductive health care. Democratic lawmakers have focused on passing shield laws, or protections for people coming to Illinois from surrounding states where abortion access is restricted or generally banned, like Indiana and Missouri. One such measure, which was signed into law earlier this year, applies to health care providers and patients. Another measure passed last month, which is waiting for a signature from Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, would prohibit law enforcement from sharing data from automated license plate readers with other states for the purpose of prosecuting someone seeking an abortion in Illinois. Other notable legislation includes requiring insurers to cover abortion medication, requiring public colleges to offer emergency contraception at "wellness kiosks" and allowing patients of crisis pregnancy centers to sue if they feel the center had misled them from seeking abortion care.

Oregon protections remain strong but Democrats struggle

Oregon has long had some of the nation's least-restrictive abortion policies. The right to receive an abortion is written into state law. But after keeping their majorities in the 2022 election, Democrats have been looking to go further. The party introduced a bill that would have ensured children of any age could receive an abortion without parental consent, expanded access to reproductive health care in rural areas, and granted legal protections to abortion providers that treat people from states where the process would be illegal. But Republicans balked. GOP Senators refused to attend floor sessions for six weeks in order to block the bill. With the legislative session in serious jeopardy, Democrats traded away pieces of their proposal to get Republicans to return. That means parental consent is still necessary for children under 15, unless two health care providers determine it would be harmful. And money for expanded services in rural parts of the state was cut. Still, Oregon is likely to protect providers who serve patients from anti-abortion states, a step Democrats and their allies have cheered. And the state continues to be extremely protective of the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Minnesota's largest abortion shift in generations

After winning the state's House, Senate and governor's office, Minnesota Democrats vowed the day after the 2022 election to expand abortion access and eliminate restrictions that had been on the books for decades. Within weeks, they passed a law guaranteeing the right to reproductive health care, including abortion. Then lawmakers advanced a plan to create new legal protections for patients that travel to the state for abortions and for providers in Minnesota. Lastly, on the final day of the legislative session, Democrats wiped out a series of restrictions on abortion. They chipped away at reporting requirements for abortion procedures, ended a 24-hour waiting period and mandate that both parents sign off on a minor's abortion, increased funding available for abortions and ended a program that funded nonprofits that advocate against abortions. Taken together, the changes are the largest shift in abortion law the state has seen in generations. Democrats at the Capitol say they'll aim to send a constitutional amendment to voters next year guaranteeing the right to abortion.

Connecticut expands who can provide abortions

Before the Dobbs decision, but after the draft abortion opinion was leaked out of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, Connecticut passed the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act. The law protects healthcare providers and patients from so-called "bounty hunter" lawsuits that seek to prosecute them for traveling out of state for an abortion. The law also allows nurse-midwives, advanced practice registered nurses, and physician assistants to perform abortions — expanding the number of clinicians and facilities available to provide abortions. This legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill to allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control and emergency contraception. Earlier this week, state Attorney General William Tong appointed two special councils to ensure reproductive healthcare is protected in Connecticut.

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Nicole Nixon is a politics reporter at CapRadio, Scott Maucione is WYPR's health reporter, Rick Pluta is Michigan Public Radio's managing editor and state Capitol bureau chief, Mawa Iqbal is a statehouse reporter at WBEZ, Bente Birkeland is Colorado Public Radio's public affairs reporter, Dirk VanderHart covers Oregon politics and government for OPB, Dana Ferguson is Minnesota Public Radio's politics reporter, Molly Ingram is a reporter at WSHU.

Sadie Leiman is heading into her final summer at Camp Kalsman, on 300 acres in Washington state. She's 16 and started going to this camp as a toddler while her mom worked there. And she's looking forward to seeing friends and being on her own. But most of all, Leiman's looking forward to Shabbat – welcoming the Sabbath every Friday night. "When you're at home, if you don't have, like, I don't know, 400 siblings – which most people don't – Shabbat is a very private thing," laughs Leiman. But at Camp Kalsman, she says, "it's so many people just dancing and singing and it's beautiful and it's spiritual and it's Jewish. It's just so fun." For American Jews who are often used to being in a cultural minority, having that immersive experience can be life-changing. Which was kind of the reason this all started. In the wake of World War II, when European Jewry had been decimated and American Jews were moving from all-Jewish enclaves to more integrated suburbs, American Jewish leaders worried that their culture might not have a future. And so they turned to summer camps. Sandra Fox, a visiting assistant professor at New York University, chronicled the mid-century expansion of these camps in her recent book The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. Fox says Jewish summer camps initially started in the 20th century with progressive reformers in the Northeast looking to take city kids out in nature, and to Americanize immigrants. But Fox says the big boom happened after World War II: "Jews, like many other white Americans in particular, return home from the war. And they receive benefits for veterans of World War II that kind of catapult them into the middle class after decades of building towards that. And in that new middle class milieu, Jews are moving to American suburbs." But Fox says that as American Jews enjoyed this comfort and assimilation, there was a concern about what would happen to the Jewish traditions that had been maintained without much conscious effort in more segregated neighborhoods. And, she adds, there was another obvious reason that Jews were afraid for Jewish culture. "The Holocaust had just happened," Fox explains. "And so in the shadow of the Holocaust, American Jews were incredibly anxious about the future of Jewish culture and Judaism as a religion and Jewish summer camps came to be seen as solutions to all kinds of communal ills, but in particular, the problem of assimilation." Summer camps became a way to hold onto and rebuild Jewish heritage. But in attempting to maintain Jewish traditions, these camps created a whole new form of it. One huge component was embracing Israel and its founding as a source of pride. "The idea was basically that Israel was something that could inspire American Jewish kids more than looking towards the Jewish past of oppression and violence in Europe," observes Fox. Bunk names and activities were tied to stories from Israel's founding. Talent shows, like this 1963 "hootenanny" from Camp Massad in the Poconos, featured Hebrew versions of popular songs. As air travel became more affordable, Fox notes that camps began bringing actual young Israelis, many of them just off their army service, to serve as counselors (and role models) for the young American campers, an exchange that continues to this day. While Israel and its founding were highlighted, the fate of Jews in Europe was also something the camps acknowledged. Some had memorials to the Holocaust right on their grounds, or used Tisha B'Av, the summertime fast day commemorating the destruction of the temples, as an occasion to reflect on either the Holocaust in particular or the preciousness of life and Jewish practice in general. As camps tried to make history come alive, there were pretty intense role-plays. Flip Frisch attended Wisconsin's Camp Herzl in the 1980s, and remembers getting up in the middle of the night to reenact an escape from Nazi-controlled Europe – not the usual lighthearted summer camp activity. "You had to have these papers and carry them with you at all times and be transported by rowboat in the dark and the back of a van with the seats taken out no windows," remembers Frisch. "And older kids pretending to be police and stopping you with flashlights in your face." Frisch says they also marked Tisha B'Av by wearing all black, and writing letters as though it was their last day on earth. Camps have largely abandoned those more dramatic (and potentially traumatizing) activities. But Frisch says, more than these very memorable recreations, she was struck by just living everyday life in a way that tied her to tradition. "I can credit camp with my entire Jewish identity. The whole reason I stuck with Judaism was camp and the connections I made," says Frisch. A recent Pew Research Center study found 40% of Americans raised Jewish attended one of these camps. Of, course some people go for a summer and never return. But some are like Frisch – who became a camp counselor and program director, and today works at her synagogue. Throughout the country, there are alumni networks, reunions, and a not-insignificant number of camp marriages. In many ways, Jewish summer camps have changed since the early days (and since Frisch's time). Talk of Israel is definitely more nuanced – especially when it comes to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. 16-year-old Sadie Leiman said that her camp's Israeli counselors lead a discussion about Israel. "We put anonymous questions in a bucket and they just answer," she explains. Those range from the non-controversial, "What's Israeli food like?" to questions that get at the intractable conflict that likely wouldn't have even been acknowledged at camps in years past: "Who's in the wrong?" and "What can we do to help?" There are other differences as well. Intermarriage, a subject that sparked fears of a "continuity crisis" for American Jews in the 1970s, is now seen as a fact of life, says Sandra Fox. "This fight against interfaith marriage doesn't really resonate with younger Jews, many of whom are choosing to intermarry and still raise their children Jewish," explains Fox. "They don't see it as a contradiction or a problem." But even with these changes – or perhaps because of them – Jewish summer camps still produce kids with a strong sense of Jewish identity who are active in maintaining Jewish tradition. And are building traditions of their own.