Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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 >>

Country Songs That Should Be Covered By Metal Bands

By Lauren Wise I was always one of those metal heads who claimed to listen to all musical genres -- except for country. But in the past year, I've realized that classic country songs, with their imagery and energy, are pretty hard to dislike. Take David Allan Coe's "If That Ain't Country," for exam ... More >>

Deadmau5, Kylie Minogue, and Timbaland - House of Blues - 2/10/13

Nero, Deadmau5, Kylie Minogue, and Timbaland House of Blues 2/10/13 A crew of electronic artists and pop stars performed last night as part of a Grammy afterparty that was also a benefit for Children's Hospital of Los Angeles Orthopedic Center. (Tickets started at $250.) But the cost didn't deter ... More >>

The Delirians Lead An East L.A. Rocksteady Renaissance

East Los Angeles is enjoying a rocksteady renaissance, thanks largely to a group called The Delirians. They formed as teenagers and have made the traditional Jamaican music their own, blending the slower-than-ska-but-faster-than-reggae riffs with signature East L.A. sounds of soul, funk and R&B. The ... More >>

Graffiti House L.A. Looks to Be a Hub for the City's Graffiti and Street Artists

Graffiti. Mostly on the streets, sometimes in galleries and always in heated art conversations, this spray-can form of expression remains a huge part of Los Angeles' identity. Looking to create a supportive, communal space for experienced and budding artists, the recently-established Graffiti House ... More >>

Man Alleges Lil Wayne Entourage Member Smashed His Head With Skateboard

Last year Downey, California-based bill poster Alfredo Marino saw Lil Wayne on Fairfax Avenue. He approached him hoping to get a photo, but says the encounter ended with a member of the rapper's entourage smashing him in the back of the head with a skateboard and sending him to the hospital. Marino ... More >>

Five Dance Shows to See in L.A. This Week, Including The Little Mermaid, But Not the Disney Kind

See also: *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week *Our Latest Theater Reviews *Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A. 5. She Swims! She Walks! She Dances! Those who know The Little Mermaid mainly from the Disney film may want to touch base with the Hans Christian Andersen ... More >>

Fuck Guilty Pleasures: Critics Need to Lay Off Macklemore

[Editor's Note: Fuck Guilty Pleasures celebrates the over-produced, commercial, artless, lowbrow music that we believe is genuinely worthwhile. Like, among the best music ever.] The number one song in the country, as you probably know, is a Seattle-based white independent hip-hop artist's ode to sh ... More >>

Top 10 "You Can't Tell Me Nothing" Rappers

In Macklemore's forthcoming single, "Can't Hold Us," he raps, "Nah they can't tell me nothing," thus continuing a long line of rappers to whom one can not tell nothing. It makes one wonder: Why are people always trying to tell rappers something? Why do the rappers refuse to listen? Why all the doub ... More >>

Dave Grohl - Hollywood Palladium - 1/31/13

Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Stevie Nicks, Queens of the Stone Age, Rage Against the Machine, and others Hollywood Palladium 1/31/13 When Dave Grohl announced late last year that the Foo Fighters were going on an indefinite hiatus, folks weren't quite sure how to interpret the news. The band had just ... More >>

Oscar-Nominated Shorts 2013: From a Simpsons Segment to a Woman Who Lives on the Ceiling

The Best L.A. Metal Concerts To See In February

Sat, Feb 2 Testament House of Blues Hollywood Many metal fans think that the Bay Area's Testament belong next to metal's "Big Four" (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax). Indeed, classic albums like The Legacy and newer output like 2012's Dark Roots of Earth provide strong evidence for this arg ... More >>

Ol' Blue Eyes is Back

There's This Amazing Kid Rapper at the School Where I Teach

Within The Kid's peer group -- the children at the school where I teach junior high ESL -- he stands out. He is generally the same age as them, and he's generally of the same intelligence academically. However: He's white. He's definitely that. Where he lives, most of the kids around him, are ... More >>

The 20 Greatest Metal Albums in History: 20-11

If you count Black Sabbath's 1970 self-titled debut as heavy metal's birth, the genre is now over 40. It can no longer be called a fad. It can have adult children, and it can run for president. (Insert "presidental metal of freedom" joke here). See also: Top 20 L.A. Metal Albums: The Complete List ... More >>

Dave Grohl On His Film Tribute to the Studio That Gave the World Nevermind

By Whitney Friedlander The lobby of Dave Grohl's Northridge-based 606 Studios has a Joan Jett book on the coffee table and a row of classic arcade games like Donkey Kong Jr. against one wall. On top of a photo booth sits an iconic "Moonman" MTV Video Music Award, festooned with a roll of toilet pap ... More >>

In Defense of Jam Bands

[Editor's Note: Fuck Guilty Pleasures celebrates the over-produced, commercial, artless, lowbrow music that we believe is genuinely worthwhile. Like, among the best music ever.] On a warm August night in 2011, roughly 18,000 Angelenos converged on the Hollywood Bowl, to partake in the swirl of cosm ... More >>

Country Star Brad Paisley's Veiled Liberalism

By Alan Scherstuhl Editor's note: Alan Scherstuhl sometimes writes about country music for our sister blog at the Village Voice. Brad Paisley, "Southern Comfort Zone" Current Billboard Country Singles Chart Position: 10 The Verdict: Holy shit, songs on the radio can still be important! In this ... More >>

Mike Atta Benefit - The Echo & Echoplex - 1/25/13

The Adolescents, Mike Watt, and others Mike Atta Benefit The Echo and Echoplex 1/25/13 It's time to "pogo and stomp the shit out of cancer," said Alice Bag at Friday's benefit concert to support punk forerunner Mike Atta. See also: Henry Rollins: The Column! Alice Bag's 
Punk Rock Legacy Diagn ... More >>

Black Flag Are Back Together

Black Flag is back together, and are almost done with a new album, according to an SST press release. See also: Black Flag's Damaged Changed Punk, and L.A.: 30 Years Later, Its Impact Is Still Felt The lineup is Greg Ginn on guitar, Ron Reyes on vocals, Gregory Moore on drums and Dale Nixon on bas ... More >>

Inside the World of L.A.'s Puppet Filmmakers

A movie must be completed before its screened, right? Not according to Graphation. Last night, in Downtown Los Angeles' Hive Gallery, the independent film group kickstarted their first installment of Works In Progress by presenting three unfinished films to an audience. The focus of the WIP seri ... More >>

A Series on the Japanese Animation of Studio Ghibli Returns to L.A.

Bad Religion's Greg Graffin Challenges Authority Through Fucking Science

For over 30 years, Bad Religion have carved out a niche as the thinking man's punk rock band. When they formed in Los Angeles in 1980, the inspiration for their lyrics came from the topic of corporate greed and the conflicts between philosophy, science, and religion. The band's 16th full-length albu ... More >>

Lil B Is the Most Important Rapper of the Decade So Far

Lil B, the heavily tattooed Berkeley, California rapper with a gleaming grill and oversized earrings, entered the hip-hop game in 2006 as part of Bay Area rap group The Pack. Over the last three years he's garnered a tremendous Internet following, popularizing the words "swag" and "based," the lat ... More >>

Openly Gay Rapper Rob B Draws From Influences Far and Wide

On a recent cool Friday afternoon, 25-year-old Mexican-American, openly gay rapper Rob B sits in one of the many cafés peppering Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. He's tan and toned, a 6-foot-1 part-time model who has done everything from runway to hand modeling, and today he's fitted in al ... More >>

How Pink Floyd Financed Artist Clare Brown's Move to L.A.

Clare Brown says she might be the first artist ever to coordinate specific color hues into all of her paintings. It's a bold claim, but the Topanga transplant knows a thing or two about color. As a 10-year-old growing up in the late '60s, Brown spent her days immersed in giant plastic colored eggs. ... More >>

How Did Caravaggio Influence Movies?

A LACMA film series asks the question

Warm-Up Comics Have the Toughest Job in Comedy

Getting sitcom audiences laughing -- by hook or by crook

Classic Rock Is Actually Amazing, You Jerk

So, a certain editor of this blog think classic rock is totally bogus, huh? See also: Classic Rock Is a Cancer on Our Society The point of his argument is that folks from our generation need to have their own taste, not be stuck in the past. But one can't deny that the music which emerged from th ... More >>

5 Dance Shows to See in L.A. This Week Including a New Festival, Awakenings and Beginnings

See also: *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week *5 Best Comedy Shows to See in L.A. This Week *Our Latest Theater Reviews *Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A. This week's dance highlights includes the answer to the question, Does L.A. need another dance festival? 5. ... More >>

Smoking Wax Weed With Rapper Demrick

[Editor's note: Soon-to-be-award-winning gonzo music journalist Danielle Bacher prowls the late late night scene for West Coast Sound. For this installment, she hit the town with Demrick, aka Young De, a rapper and songwriter who has collaborated with Snoop Dogg, Cypress Hill, Kurupt and Xzibit. Als ... More >>

Dance in L.A. Is Alive and Kicking

Artist Hudson Marquez: 'Anybody Who Talks About Their Own Art Is, Like, Full of Shit'

"I can talk about the people in the paintings or the things in the paintings, but as far as talking about art, I think you just look at it," says L.A.-based artist Hudson Marquez, whose new series of paintings depicts people like Jayne Mansfield, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sophia Loren and Ray Charles and t ... More >>

DJ Muggs Does Dubstep. Prepare For Your Head to Explode

DJ Muggs at 44 still rocks his skull cap and looks not unlike the 20-something hip-hop head who first appeared in Cypress Hill's video for "How I Could Just Kill a Man." He sits at a laptop in his Burbank studio, playing a track he recently produced featuring a pair of hit Queens rappers, Action Bro ... More >>

Eight Rules for White People Who Like Hip-Hop

White people and their sometimes-problematic place in hip-hop culture have been in the news recently. At The New Republic last week Dave Bry mulled Chief Keef and whether it's ok for white music critics to like violent rap, while we wrote about white entertainers who think they have a pass to say th ... More >>

Action Bronson: I Can't See Myself Wearing a Skirt or a Wig

One of hip-hop's do-no-wrong stories of 2012, Albanian Queens-native Action Bronson put out Blue Chips for free and followed it up with Rare Chandeliers last year. He signed to Vice Records and made countless critics' year-end lists flowing unpretentiously on typical rap fare (girls, chronic, hooker ... More >>

Emancipation Proclamations

Ingmar Bergman's Nora and two plays by Horton Foote at Open Fist Theatre present defiant women, in ways that feel almost nostalgic

Shepard Fairey Street Art Mural Defaced on La Brea -- and This Goes on Globally

Everyone is a critic. Even taggers. Shepard Fairey, a widely known street artist who often garners mixed reviews, has been panned with graffiti spray-painted over a fifty-foot wall piece on 2nd Street and La Brea Boulevard. At the scene, a property manager was noticeably disturbed by the tagging ov ... More >>

Our Ten Most Anticipated Indie Albums For 2013

With the anticipated return of big-name indie bands like Phoenix, Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend this year, 2013 is shaping up to be big. But aside from the usual suspects, there are also some newcomers and reunited acts expected to make noise this year. Here are some albums we speculate may end up ... More >>

$ellebrity: Photographer Kevin Mazur Discusses His New Film About Gossip, Paparazzi and the Cost of Fame

See also: *More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage It's possible that the price of fame has never been higher -- and not just in the tried-and-true Hollywood storylines of fame, fortune and the tragic falls from grace. In his new documentary $ellebrity, seasoned celebrity and event photographer Kevin Mazur ... More >>

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Turns 10 This Year. Here's Why the Sci-Fi Anime Series Is Still Important

It's 2030. War has left its mark on the world, with newly powerful nations rising in the place of the old guard, but terrorism is still a threat and governments can still be corrupt. In the midst of this is Public Security Section 9, Japan's elite group of crime solvers now set with the task of trac ... More >>

This Is What It Feels Like In My Stomach Right Now

There is an evil inside of me. It is brooding and malevolent and vicious. It is absolute darkness. It is rotting my body on a cellular level. And it is there because I thought a bad idea (getting a burrito at the mall right before it closed) was a good idea ("HEY, LET'S GET A BURRITO FROM THE MALL B ... More >>

Hip-Hop Albums We're Excited For in 2013

The world didn't end, the new year is upon us, and it's time to get pumped about 2013. While we've all but given up hope that 2013 will be the year we see Detox, there's still plenty of releases either officially announced or highly likely to land that have us excited. It's with the boom-bap baby ne ... More >>

Quit Hating on Kings of Leon, Even If You Disliked "Sex On Fire"

[Editor's Note: Fuck Guilty Pleasures celebrates the over-produced, commercial, artless, lowbrow music that we believe is genuinely worthwhile. Like, among the best music ever.] I have several friends who should ostensibly like everything about Kings of Leon, but they strongly dislike the Nashville ... More >>

The Ten Best Country Albums of 2012

By Alan Scherstuhl This list of the year's best country albums is assembled with two important premises in mind: First: If the people who record and listen to these records consider them country, than they're damn well country. Purists who argue that country should still sound like '68, '76, '84 o ... More >>

Here's What Didn't Suck About B.E.T.'s Top 100 Videos Of 2012

On December 31, BET showed their Top 100 videos of the year. It was a block of television that ended at 10 p.m. and began, if I'm remembering accurately, around 48 BC. I'd planned on watching all of it, absorbing the videos and then using that information to reach some grand, great point about rap ... More >>

The Best L.A. Metal Concerts to See in January

Fri, Jan 4 Neurosis Fonda Theatre Oakland's Neurosis have spent 25 years crafting haunting eight-to-ten minute opuses; their tracks slowly build until they explodes in an emotional crescendo. Band leaders Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till tell harrowing tales of apocalyptic plagues and other disasters. ... More >>

Random Notebook Dump: The Year In Metal 2012

A lot of monumental things in metal this year. Some of them involved actual music. Many did not. In honor of the year's end, we gave our notebook a good shaking to help us remember the most important stuff. Top 20 L.A. Metal Albums of All Time -Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe was jailed for a mo ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend

Friday, December 28 Fishbone, Quinto Sol KEY CLUB Fishbone have gone through a lot of changes since emerging from South Central L.A. in 1979, but the group can always be counted on for a funky good time. Lead singer/saxist Angelo Moore, bassist Norwood Fisher and crew have evolved from a ska-reggae ... More >>

Five Dance Events to See in L.A. this Week including a Kwanzaa Fest and a Viennese New Year

See also: *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week *Our New Theater Reviews *Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A. This week's events offer a waltz or a samba to greet the new year, a Kwanzaa celebration, Russian jazz dance and the last Nutcracker until 2013. 5. Waltzing ... More >>