This first episode of the rest of our podcast’s life isn’t a straight ahead interview with a musician. Instead we asked music writer kris ex to come in and talk about the value of music journalism, especially its usefulness to musicians, and we kind of loosely centered our discussion on Kendrick’s album. kris was published for the first time in June of 1994, in the literary magazine African Voices and in the inaugural issue of Ego Trip. Since then he’s written for Billboard, Rolling Stone, Vibe, One Nut, Hip-Hop Connection, the LA Times, Complex, The Fader, Pitchfork, Mass Appeal and elsewhere. In 1996 he published a piece about Tribe in The Source, which will come up in this episode!kris also co-wrote 50 Cent’s memoir, which was published in 2005, blogged for XXL in the mid-2000s and edited the first four issues of Respect, a magazine devoted to hip-hop photography. In 2013, Frannie asked him if he’d start writing for NPR. These days he prioritizes writing on Facebook.We recorded in early May, and talked for so long that we’re running this interview in two parts.