50 Cent

More Food and Drink Events: Tornado Relief, Coffee Bean Birthday Spring Pasta Tasting

Oklahoma Tornado Relief L.A. Spice is featuring a special menu this week, organized to benefit natural disaster victims in Oklahoma. A dollar will be donated to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma for each item purchased from the special menu. The options include shrimp and corn hush puppies, barbecu ... More >>

Veteran Producer Sir Jinx is the Missing Link

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] See also: Edward "Apple" Nelson Is a Legendary L.A. Drummer and 70-Year-Old Yoga Enthusiast Sir Jinx is the missing link. He is a vital nerve. Remove th ... More >>

Who's the All-Time Champion of Rap Beef on Twitter?

Twenty years ago, rap animosity was expressed via diss songs. Like, if someone pissed you off you went home, thought about it, went to a recording studio, pressed up your album, and sent it around. The object of your diss might not find out until six months later. More recently the rise of the mix ... More >>

Greydon Square Is the Atheist Rapper

Midway through an interview with Greydon Square, I sneeze. "Bless you," the 31-year-old rapper born Eddie Collins says instinctively. He catches himself. "I know, an atheist that says, 'Bless you.' Habits, man." Greydon Square is the atheist rapper. In hip-hop, a genre in which where rappers thank ... More >>

Aziz Ansari

What the Dodgers' Musical Taste Says About Them

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Forget phrenology, both the overrated Roots album and the 19th-century pseudo-science. Ignore palmistry, psychotherapy and Rick Warren. The best way to b ... More >>

The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand": Why This Song Sucks

[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.] Song: The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" History: The Beatles are The Beatles and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Let's all just ... More >>

The Cataracs Are Not Like a G6

It's a Friday morning, and David Singer-Vine and Niles Hollowell-Dhar sit on the sun-dappled patio of their favorite taco stand, Silver Lake's El Siete Mares. But they don't order food. "It's too early for tacos," Singer-Vine, 24, says as he shakes his head, his eyes still a little sleepy. Just in ... More >>

Here Are Pictures of Dr. Dre's New $13 Million House

See also: The Original Original Gangsta: Ice-T talks about his star-studded directorial debut, his famous affiliates and his life with Coco in New York Ice-T's ambitious documentary Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap comes out today, and in honor of the occasion we spoke with him for our music ... More >>

Moral Defect - Howl at the Moon - 5-21-12

Moral Defect Howl at the Moon 5-21-12 Overheard in the crowd: "That was the sickest cover of "In Da Club" I've ever heard!" At Howl at the Moon last night, local group Moral Defect delivered energetic hip hop rock infused with heavy metal solos and funk guitar. A mixed crowd of friends and fans sa ... More >>

Best of Coachella: Sunday, April 22

See also: Our complete Coachella coverage By the third day of Coachella's second weekend -- the sixth and final day of this year's festival -- folks had more or less learned to ignore the dust and the heat. Here are our intrepid writers' favorite things about the final hours of the 2012 event.

Coachella Weekend Two Tickets Are Selling Waaaaaay Below Face Value

See also: *Our complete Coachella coverage *Coachella Preview 2012: Everything You Need to Know About the Performers Maybe it's the glut of tickets resulting from the addition of a second weekend, maybe it's because everyone hated the Tupac hologram; for whatever reason, Coachella tickets can be h ... More >>

Alert: SXSW Coverage Ahead

"What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." -- Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of the above building ... More >>

Schoolboy Q's Questions and Answers

He didn't know what to do with his life. Rap was the last resort

Schoolboy Q on Kendrick Lamar, How Rappers Influence Kids to Gangbang and the One Question He Hates

See also: Schoolboy Q's Questions and Answers: He Didn't Know What to Do With His Life. Rap Was the Last Resort This week's music feature is on Schoolboy Q. Lounging on a couch in his manager's house in Carson, the rapper told us about transitioning from stuffing a baggie of crack in his cheek to s ... More >>

Slim the Mobster Has An Amazing House

Slim the Mobster​Slim the Mobster and I are scheduled to do an interview at a Northridge gun range, set up by his publicist. But as the rapper pulls up and peers out from under his black Dodgers baseball hat, he looks hesitant. "I don't want my picture taken with a gun, you feel me?" he says ... More >>

Having A Dollar Sign In Your Name Is Awe$ome

On his blog Stuff White People Like, author Christian Lander did not include musicians with dollar signs in their names. Why? Because white people hate them! Take Ke$ha. Now, there's a lot to dislike about the rather-coarse poplet, who seems to be encouraging seven-year-old girls to drink a handl ... More >>

Das Racist, Danny Brown - The Roxy - 11-3-11

Rebecca Haithcoat​Das Racist, Danny Brown The Roxy 11-3-11 Aural chaos characterized Das Racist's show last night. Also, "Tricks with Microphones." The NYC trio of Himanshu Suri (Heems), Victor Vazquez (Kool A.D.) and Ashok Kondabolu (Dap) had a great earworm in 2008, "Combination Pizza Hut a ... More >>

The Worst Rapper Names Of All Time, Besides Shorty Shitstain

Why not Royce Da 5'9" 170 pounds, 10 shoe size?​See also: *Top Five Worst Ironic Indie Rock Band Names, Besides Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. *There's Three Of Us, But We're Not The Beatles: The Ten Most Illogical Rap Lyrics In History In the tarnished annals of rubbish musician names, rappers have ... More >>

Five Hip-Hop Snitching Controversies

Yesterday LA Weekly brought you the shocking revelations of former LAPD detective Greg Kading, whose new book Murder Rap fingers Suge Knight for ordering Biggie's killing and Diddy for ordering Tupac's. At the center of the story is Duane Keith "Keffe D" Davis, who told Kading that Diddy offered him ... More >>

Top Five Greatest Rap Hook Singers

Frank Ocean​Last week we were supposed to get the major label release of Odd Future cohort Frank Ocean's debut project, nostalgia, ULTRA, previously a mixtape. Unfortunately, the suits at Def Jam have apparently stricken it from the upcoming-release schedule, with Ocean reacting by releasing t ... More >>

Laughing My Fucking Ass Off: Top Five Drastic Rapper Image Changes

​The buzz around professional party-circuit players LMFAO's second album, Sorry For Party Rocking, is still going strong. The group's success has largely involved cultivating a public image resembling an extreme version of the most ridiculous hipster archetype. But it didn't always used to b ... More >>

Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. Murders and ex-LA Times Reporter Chuck Philips: A Timeline

Chuck Philips, award-winning LA Times journalist, is out of a job.​Chuck Philips, once a top reporter for the Los Angeles Times, spent over a decade investigating the murders of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur and his East Coast rival, the Notorious B.I.G. But in 2008, when it was revealed tha ... More >>

James Rosemond, a.k.a. Jimmy Henchman, Rap Manager Allegedly Linked to Tupac Attack, Arrested in L.A.-to-NYC Drug Investigation

James Rosemond.​Update: According to various reports Rosemond was remanded/held without bail following a court appearance today. A hip-hop impresario alleged to have had a role in the 1994 attack on rapper Tupac Shakur that set off the East Coast-West Coast rap wars of the '90s was arrested i ... More >>

Top 10 Ripped Rappers (With Pics to Prove it)

Foxy Brown: the good ol' days​ Last Weekend, Eminem was doing his thing at the Grammys, but inquiring voyeurs just wanted to know, "where were those angry abs? Luckily, there's a stockpile of trashy pics on the Web that we can lust at. LL Cool J hasn't let himself go yet, and Nelly (despite h ... More >>

Live in L.A.: LCD Soundsystem, 50 Cent, Peanut Butter Wolf, Isis, The xx, Local Natives

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem​Hope you don't feel slighted, Los Angeles. Two weekends ago on That Other Coast, LCD Soundsystem brought the house -- or, rather, Terminal 5 -- down with an eye-popping, ear-decimating, 2 1/2-hour show that wound up with "New York I Love You" and a cover of Alic ... More >>

Give Up!: Top Five Sad Songs, Picked by Dublab's Frosty and Dntel

Just give up. Do it.​Mark "Frosty" McNeil will be spinning at "GIVE UP -- stop dancing and cry...," dublab's regular "dj's-on-a -bummer" night at the Hyperion Tavern this coming Sunday, March 21st. WCS interviewed him this week about this peculiar event. What is "Give Up"? Give Up is an expl ... More >>

Nacional Records on Fire: The Ten Best Spanish-Language/Latin Albums 2009

By Christopher Lopez It's been a year of surprises in "Latin music," (whatever that catch-all genre term for Spanish-language music means in 2009). Reggaetón continues fading, albeit slowly, and the industry's mainstays aren't garnering the attention they used to. Case in point: Don Omar's summer ... More >>

This Ain't Your Dad's Sid and Nancy: Film Maverick Abel Ferrara Brings his Chelsea Hotel Documentary to LA

​About a year ago, cult NYC film director Abel Ferrara (Driller Killer, Ms. 45, the OG Bad Lieutenant, The Addiction, etc.) wrapped his indiepunk documentary on the legendary Chelsea Hotel. The film premiered at Cannes last year and is now being gradually unrolled across the US. Ferrara is com ... More >>

Movie Reviews: Armored, Brothers, Everybody's Fine

Also, The Last Station, Transylmania and more

The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs

In 2009, rap is no longer dangerous. Meet an MC wrestling with capital-letter issues: blood, dirt and death

Inauguration Day Extravaganza: The First Hip-Hop President?

Image via Hip Hop is Read Unless you've been living in the Madagascan Rain Forest or are a cave-dwelling ignicolist in Outer Mongolia, you're well aware that today marks the inauguration of Barack Obama. To the delight of the rap world and the chagrin of the social security set, Obama has been bi ... More >>

Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously ... More >>

The Many Moods of Rock the Bells

Hip-hop's been in a lull. Meet the new torchbearers

Downtown in Stereo: New Year’s Street Parties Compete

Year-end bashes fulfill L.A.’s huge dance-music appetite

Bishop Lamont-The Next Great West Coast Hope?

I...listened to all that Death Row stuff....and Lords Of The Underground, Busta Rhymes, Redman and Keith Murray, where your takes had to be so clean and ill to get off the phonetics that you were dropping. Your lines had to be crisp. Other cats don’t come from that school. It took me studying R ... More >>

Mixed Messages

The mixtape scene slowly rebounds nearly a year after DJ Drama’s bust

Hot off the Grill

And CHOLO a go-go

Kicking It

Star Shoes says sayonara to Cahuenga boogie

Tear Down These Walls

Middle-class malaise meets inner-city despair in The Architect

Rock the Mic Like Cal Worthington!

Ugly Duckling put the old-school house-party vibe on wax

10 Albums That Stank Up the Room

Where’s the Funny?

The year hip-hop forgot its dick can fly

Hardcore Middle Class

Kanye West is no savior, but his refusal to be anything but himself just might set hip-hop straight

Sunshine State

Bungle in the Jungle

Bubblegum Hip-hop and a Band With three Test Icicles

Rebel Yelp

Clubland

Stars and Bars

A night lover’s guide to party spots