Carlin is a contributor for TIME. Pop Culture For more than a decade, Song Exploder, hosted by composer and producer Hrishikesh Hirway, has given musicians a forum to tell the stories behind their ...

Pharrell Williams is—well, let me just say, he’s a big reason why Song Exploder exists. He’s a singer, songwriter and producer, and in the 90s, when I first heard the work that he was doing with the ...

About a decade ago, the musician Hrishikesh Hirway had a vision. Inspired by the work of the English composer Benjamin Britten – and, more recently, its interpolation by the filmmaker Wes Anderson in ...

Mural by Kenya D. Lawton of Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell) Photo by Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives) Two men were convicted in federal court on Tuesday in Brooklyn of murdering Jason “Jam ...

With a history lesson on hip hop and quotes from Nas and Kendrick Lamar, a federal judge says prosecutors should only rarely cite rap lyrics as evidence. By Bill Donahue A federal judge says ...

Jam Master Jay’s accused killer won’t have his violent rap lyrics used against him, a Brooklyn judge ruled — in a written opinion that referenced 50 years of hip-hop history, spanning genre pioneer DJ ...

HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: You're listening to "Song Exploder," where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. My name is Hrishikesh Hirway. MARTÍNEZ: And he ...

In February, metalhead vocalist Paavo Laapotti so impressed the coaches on The Voice of Finland with his take on Tenacious D's hilarious "Master Exploder" that, this month, he got the chance to battle ...

Fast Company: What gave you the idea for Song Exploder? Hrishikesh Hirway: As a person who made music, I was always trying to figure out how other people made their work, and what I could learn from ...