🥇Track Change Wins Best Podcast at Public Media Awards🥇

Hip-hop guru Speech Thomas went on a journey behind bars to record music with incarcerated men. We were there to capture every painful and inspiring moment—and the powers that be were listening 🙏.

Images courtesy Resonant Pictures

Hey, there! Checking in with some big news that all of us at Narratively are so proud of: While much of the media world was fixated on Emmy results the past couple weeks (you go, Jean Smart!!), the 56th Public Media Awards captured our team’s hearts and minds because of the winner in their Best Podcast category — our very own Track Change! Our five-part documentary podcast, which we produced with VPM, follows Grammy-winning musician Speech Thomas into Virginia’s Richmond City Jail to record an album with four incarcerated men from inside a makeshift studio.

Speech, frontman of the famed hip-hop crew Arrested Development — and known to many as the “Godfather of Conscious Hip-Hop” — told us the special project was all about “making the most of every opportunity to get these men’s voices heard.” Our four subjects, he went on, “are sharing their raw and uncut stories about our country’s prison system, the conditions that brought them to those cells and the challenges of addiction. All of this through music, and allowing us access. The public has a rare chance to listen and learn from the front lines.” Amen to that.

If you haven’t already, it would indeed mean a lot to us if you listened to Track Change — at NPR, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

But wait, there’s more! You can also check out a really great segment about our show on NPR’s All Things Considered, which features an interview with one of the stars of Track Change just after he was finally released from prison.