The Oakland, Calif., songstress gives listeners a new take on old music -- for free.

Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright team deliver a frantic -- and tragic -- comedy about early New Orleans.

This week on The Confab: Dorothy Height's funeral and the end of an era. The racial shorthand of "victim studies" in the reparations debate, Clybourne Park and the complexities of gentrification, and Guru, Mos Def and reconciling the black middle class in the hip-hop community. Join The Root's managing editor as he talks with media and culture writer Natalie Hopkinson and regular contributor to The Root Stanley Crouch.

* Podcast production by Abdullah Rufus.

* Podcast theme music by Timothy Morrison.

Will you read a book by Obama's mother, sister, brother, or brother-in-law? Are authors underpaid? More questions from Books on the Root.