It's Black Music Month. Here's What's In the Feed.
June belongs to Black music. Every streaming platform throws up a playlist, every brand rolls out a campaign, and your For You page fills with moments from artists who have been shaping the sound of this country since before anyone called it pop. That's the month we're in.
But there's another way to move through Black Music Month that doesn't get enough credit: podcasts. Not the ones that recap the Billboard charts. The ones where N.O.R.E. is pouring drinks with Lil Wayne and the conversation goes two and a half hours with no commercial breaks. The ones where Tank is sitting across from the songwriter who co-wrote half your favorite R&B albums and asking questions a journalist never would. The ones trying to make sure the history of Black music actually gets documented before it disappears.
Five shows worth your June. In no particular order.
Queue Points
Before we get to the obvious names, start here.
Queue Points, hosted by DJ Sir Daniel and Jay Ray, is the kind of show that earns the phrase "award-nominated" because it set out to do something specific and actually did it. The premise is deceptively simple: deep-dive into Black music history through artist spotlights, iconic albums, and the cultural moments that gave those albums their weight. The execution is careful and thorough in a way that a lot of music podcasts that claim to be history-focused are not.
If you've ever been frustrated watching the history of hip-hop, soul, funk, or R&B told by people who weren't there, or worse, by people who flattened the complexity into a neat timeline. Queue Points is the corrective. This is Black music history told with ownership. Pull up an episode on any genre you care about and see what you've been missing.
R&B Money
Tank and J. Valentine built something specific with R&B Money: a place where the actual craftspeople behind R&B get to explain their work.
Both hosts are Grammy-winning songwriters and producers, which means the conversations here operate on a different frequency than the average celebrity-interview format. When Tank asks a producer about a session, he's asking about chord choices, room dynamics, and the business deals underneath the music. J. Valentine brings the same rigor. Guests have been some of the most important writers, singers, and executives in R&B for decades, and they talk to Tank and Valentine differently than they'd talk to a journalist, because these two are peers.
It's June. R&B Money is the obvious call for Black Music Month and it earns the title every episode.
Drink Champs
You probably already know Drink Champs. N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN have been building this for years, and what they created (a laid-back, longform interview format where hip-hop's biggest names actually say something real) became a template that a lot of shows have tried to copy without replicating the thing that actually makes it work.
That thing is atmosphere. Guests relax in a way they don't in most formats, and the conversations that come out of that relaxation are often the most revealing things you'll hear about the people who built hip-hop. There's a reason the interviews with Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Snoop Dogg became moments. N.O.R.E. isn't performing an interview; he's having a conversation, and the camera happens to be on.
In June, when everyone's reflecting on Black music's legacy, Drink Champs has a deep archive worth digging into. Start anywhere.
BackStory with Colby Colb
Radio personality Colby "Colb" Tyner has been in the industry long enough that the people he interviews trust him the way you trust someone who was present for the things you're both talking about. That's the quiet power of BackStory.
Tyner sits with musicians, entertainers, athletes, and cultural figures who helped shape what Black music sounds like, and uses narrative storytelling alongside the interview to give conversations real structure. This isn't just questions and answers. It's journalism with warmth. If you want the backstory behind the names and the records and the cultural moments that made June worth celebrating every year, BackStory fills in details you won't find anywhere else.
Million Dollaz Worth of Game
Gillie Da King and Wallo are not, technically, a music podcast. But if you've spent any real time with Million Dollaz Worth of Game, you already know that the line between hip-hop culture and hip-hop music stopped being a useful line a long time ago.
What Gillie and Wallo built, now one of the biggest podcasts in the game, works because of a combination that's genuinely hard to find: rap credibility, real-life experience, motivation, comedy, and an interview style that makes artists open up in ways they don't elsewhere. When hip-hop's biggest names come through the show, they're often more honest about the music, the business, and the culture than in any other setting. That honesty is worth showing up for.
This isn't your typical music recommendation. But in June, this is the feed.
Three Weeks Left. Use Them.
Black Music Month started June 1 and there are still three weeks to go. These five shows cover the full range of what Black music podcasting can do: preservation, craft, intimate access, institutional memory, and living culture. None of them require you to be a hardcore fan to plug in; you can start anywhere and find your way.
Find a show you haven't heard yet. Text the link to someone who needs it. That's how this works.