De La Soul

Milking Your Fans and Family? This Is a Bad Idea

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... 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 >>

Andrew Lojero Creates Timelessness on a Budget

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] You can't quite call Andrew Lojero a promoter. It does him a disservice to say that he "throws shows." What he does is closer to arranging love letters t ... More >>

MOCA's 'Blues for Smoke' Exhibit Raises the Question: What Does 'the Blues' Even Mean?

Music scholars, art curators and grumpy old men playing chess in the park have long debated the definition of "the blues." They will never reach a consensus. There are many irrefutable images of the blues: juke joints, a roadside chain gang, Son House's metal-clad ring finger. But it is also the bed ... More >>

The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend

See also: Marilyn Manson Rambles, Makes Jokes About the Dark Knight Killer Friday, August 17 Charli XCX TROUBADOUR This young London lass arrives in L.A. fresh from opening a string of Midwestern arena shows for Coldplay, which has to rank among the least appropriate bookings ever: On You're the O ... More >>

Top 10 Jukeboxes in Los Angeles

For all the best of L.A. music, download our free Best Of Mobile app. See Also: Best Hip Hop Jukebox in a Dive Bar An amazing jukebox will tell exactly how connected bartenders and their bosses are to their patrons and the moods they want to create. This list is composed of those heroes that wou ... More >>

Top Ten Rap Albums For People Who Don't Know Shit About Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is nearly 40, but many still find this slightly-disorienting world of beats, rhymes and oversize personalities a bit daunting. So consider this our hip-hop Cliff's notes; here are the albums you should know about if you don't want to look silly at cocktail parties. We're not saying these a ... More >>

Gangrene Get High, So High

Alchemist and Oh No's label gave them a weed budget

The Ettes, Sade, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Benefit for Nick Curran

Also, Kendrick Lamar, the Punk Rock BBQ, Katy B and others

Crate Digging With Z-Trip

Kelly Brown​Z-Trip is lost. We're standing in the middle of Rockaway Records in Silver Lake, in the rock section's "G-H" area, and the DJ -- born Zach Sciacca -- is in his own world. We were discussing the golden age of DJ culture when he got sidetracked, his fingers flipping madly through vin ... More >>

Last Night: Beats Rhymes & Life Party with Madlib, Phife, Peanut Butter Wolf, and Prince Paul

Lainna FaderPhife from A Tribe Called Quest​The inaugural edition of Paper Ships was a party celebrating the release of Michael Rapaport's documentary, Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, which opens in L.A. and New York today. Featuring sets from frosty (Dublab), Garth T ... More >>

Top 7 Hall & Oates-Sampled Hip-Hop Songs

We can go for that!​By Sheila Dichoso Nothing says hip-hop like Hall & Oates. That's right. Not even the filthy mouths of 2 Live Crew could resist their soft rock hooks, luxurious hair and awkward, ambiguous lyrics. (You can't go for what, exactly?) From Wu Tang to Kanye, rappers have paid ... More >>

Wanna Hear Tupac Throw Shade From the Grave?

You gotta love Tupac​In a just-released diss track called, "Watch Ya Mouth," Tupac proclaims, "Lemme get my preach on!" And he does, even if the congregation has a few weird members. Shooting verbal bullets at Dr. Dre and Nas, sticking conscious rappers De La Soul (huh?) with the line, "E ... More >>

Live Review: Gorillaz at Gibson Amphitheatre

Timothy NorrisGorillaz: an unprecedented revue​ Say you dreamed up a virtual band with a friend of yours who's a comic book artist. Say a bunch of instruments were lying around waiting for you to pick and pluck at them, and a bunch of friends kept dropping by to play. You'd act like a kid. No, ... More >>

Tonight: Gorillaz, Reigning Sound, White Sea, Bullet for My Valentine, VersaEmerge, Onra

Gorillaz​The festival-closing Coachella set by Gorillaz back in April was as memorable for what it wasn't as what it was. The Damian Albarn-fronted collective went it without its typical big-screen animations and played unmasked -- with the Clash's Mick Jones and Paul Simonon joining for a se ... More >>

In Honor of the Walkman: Ten Must-Have Cassette Classics, From 'Da Da Da' to Deathrock to 'Do Me!'

Turns out the Walkman isn't dead yet, but let's face it (those of us who weren't surprised to find that the outmoded portable was still being manufactured): The writing's on the wall. As a sort of premature eulogy for the player, West Coast Sound revisits some of the Walkman's finer moments through ... More >>

Cut Chemist: Too Many DJs

Call yourself a DJ 'cause you bought two turntables and a mixer? World-class L.A. DJ is putting you on notice

Attention J-Dilla Heads: Slum Village's T3 on Finally Releasing the Album, Dilla's pre-Tribe Beginnings and that Whole "New Native Tongues" Reputation

E1 MusicSlum Village's T3: No fear of a black hat​"The idea for a Slum Village reunion album came from a conversation I had with J Dilla before he passed away," says T3, the last living member of the beloved Detroit rap group. Released this week, Villa Manifesto is a fitting end to the Slum Vi ... More >>

WTF Is Art-Rap?!

Of Hummus and Hip-Hop

Day 3: Gorillaz at Coachella, Why the Multi-Media Group Matters

Gorillaz, the multi-media music project helmed by former Blur front man Damon Albarn and Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett, is the most intriguing, and perhaps one of the most important, music groups to emerge from the '00s. Nowhere was that more obvious than Sunday night at Coachella, when Gorilla ... More >>

Suite for Ma Dukes Orchestra's "Take Notice," Based on Music of J Dilla, Video Premiere [MP3]

Suite for Ma Dukes Orchestra "Take Notice" Video Premiere [MP3]

Soul of the Samurai: Afro Samurai Creator Takashi Okazaki Shares the Tunes Behind His Characters

Takashi Okazaki always liked the idea of being a DJ. In fact, he apparently has a pretty hefty collection of hip-hop, funk and soul on vinyl that needs to upload to his computer. But, as Okazaki said through a translator during our interview at Anime Expo, he thought that all DJs "were really cool ... More >>

Last Night: Erykah Badu Gives Fashion Lesson at UCLA Jazz Fest

Erykah Badu left her audience hanging at the Jazz and Reggae Festival at UCLA this weekend. Maybe it's because she's gearing up for her upcoming gig at Club Nokia or something; despite a generous set of songs from New Amerykah Part One, as well as some old goodies, Badu was surprisingly serious. She ... More >>

A Conversation with Posdnuos of De La Soul: On Nike Run Mixes, The Current State of Hip-Hop and Oodles of O's

De La Soul, back in the day Only a handful of rap groups can be bandied about as G.O.A.T: Wu-Tang, Outkast, EPMD, Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, UGK, The Geto Boys, and De La Soul. If you need an introduction to the De La -- Posdnuos, Dave/Trugoy the Dove, and Maseo -- you obviously hav ... More >>

Has the L.A. Hip-Hop Plague Finally Passed?

Four on the floor

Solillaquists of Sound, J-Live and Chali 2Na Release a Tribute Song to J Dilla, Inspired By LA Weekly Article/Follow-Up Interview With Dilla's Mom, Ms. Maureen Yancey

Still a little stunned by this one. I suppose we can chalk this up as some minor triumph to the power of the media, at a time when the Fourth Estate isn't exactly going through its finest moment. I'm not in the habit of running press releases in full, but I'll make the exception after the jump. I ... More >>

The Many Moods of Rock the Bells

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

Wax On, Wax Off

Car wash, yeah; pole-dancing queen; photo Zone at Drkrm

Weiss Muxtapes #7 and #8: I Can't Live Without My (Internet) Radio

Have you ever read this blog and wondered to yourself, hmm...this Jeff Weiss fellow has some self-righteous and ill-founded opinions, is it possible that he may be in the wrong medium? One would hope. Yet despite my repeated attempts to turn these misguided ideals into a viable run for the GOP nom ... More >>

Record Reviews: Gnarls Barkley, Evangelista, No Age, Destroyer

Also, The Knux, Ghost on the Highway, The Little Ones

Check the Technique: Notes from the Golden Age

Hip-hop scribe profiles 36 seminal rap albums. Let the arguments begin

Rock Picks

For the week of April 5–12

Mood Indigo

Blue Velvet’s Kris Morningstar cooks for the night

Rock Picks

For September 21–28

Freaky Kinky Nation

The weird-ass, beautiful history of ’80s hip-hop, as curated by Tommy Boy records

Music Picks

For Feb. 17 - 23

Going to the Grammys...

Considering I may be tone deaf, can't sing to save a life, it's pretty safe to say performing at the Grammy's is a dream out of reach. That is until I was chosen to be a stage performer for the Gorillaz's duet with MADONNA at this year's Grammy Awards!!  I was a little older than their projec ... More >>

Of Mice and Gorillaz

Panoramic producer Danger Mouse orchestrated some of 2005’s most memorable moments. He’s just warming up

''Led by God to Do Me''

Reverend Run, raising heck

Before Bling

Hip-hop’s storied past

Music To Party Like a Duckfucker

Freedom Calls

Jurassic 5 reach higher ground

Gut Feeling

Edited by Kateri Butler

Ring of the Fellowship

Frozen Entrée

Hope Sandoval wants to make you cry

Rap and Revelation

Words to the wise from Blood of Abraham

Corruptors

The rap on Styles of Beyond

Fallin' Up

Black Eyed Peas' rap to the rescue

All About the Benjamins

Hip-hop: The need, not the greed