Freestyle Fellowship

Rapper and Boxer Rheteric Ramirez Flows Like He Fights

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Rheteric Ramirez raps like a welterweight prizefighter. His flow bobs and weaves. Double-timed uppercuts of words follow methodical chants. Rhyme schemes ... More >>

The Definitive Guide to the Music of The Big Lebowski

L.A. Weekly is celebrating The Big Lebowski's 15th anniversary with a massive cover story tribute! Check out our other Lebowski-themed stories. Not doing so would be very un-Dude. The Dude's identity is strongly informed by music. As a former Metallica roadie and free love-era denizen still trying ... More >>

2012: A Landmark Year in L.A. Hip-Hop

L.A. hip-hop hasn't seen a year like this one since 1992, when the word G-Funk was (re)defined and art-rap was steadily making noise in and around Leimert Park. Twenty years ago saw, of course, the release of The Chronic, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, The Predator, Spice 1, and Way 2 Fonky, among ot ... More >>

Doing Drugs, Lots of Drugs, With Myka 9

8:55 PM: I arrive at Corner Bakery Cafe in Westwood to pick up 43-year-old rapper/producer/MC Michael Troy (aka Myka 9) and his Canadian producer Graham Murawsky aka Factor. For some background on Myka, peep our story on his seminal group Freestyle Fellowship. 8:57 PM: "How are you, beautiful?" My ... More >>

Catching Up With Grandmaster B

Having Already Influenced Every Rapper You Like, Freestyle Fellowship Are Back

Trevor Treynor​Sunshine men go dark and sky rappers eventually touch cement, but Freestyle Fellowship swore that they would never fall the fuck off. That was the promise of 1991, the pre-riot boiling point when their first hand-hawked collection of songs, To Whom It May Concern, crushed casset ... More >>

Music Picks: Talib Kweli, Pete Yorn, Lucy Schwartz

Also Rise Against, Piney Gir, Deradoorian and others

Music Picks: Repeater, Project Blowed 16th Anniversary, Infected Mushroom

Also, Riot Grrl Christmas Carnival, Captain Ahab and others

Music Picks: Sweaters, Jonathan Richman, Hanni El Khatib, Henry Rollins

Also, Aloe Blacc, Maren Parusel, the Greenhornes and others

2Pac and Walt Whitman

Two professors anthologize the best rap lyrics

Ringtone Rap, Michael Franti and Herpes: Nocando and DJ Nobody are 'Bomb Zombies'

We CAN go for that: Low End Theory's Nocando and DJ Nobody are Bomb Zombies.​Check out a leak from a brand new, unannounced collaboration between Low End Theory residents DJ Nobody and Nocando. Their duo is dubbed Bomb Zombies and has an EP due out early next month on Alpha Pup Records. The s ... More >>

This weekend: Scissor Sisters, Sheryl Crow, Pink Martini, Bonerama, the Watson Twins, Dead Confederate, Trey Songz

Scissor Sisters​Scissor Sisters' new album Night Work -- three years in the making, and re-making (they scrapped 18 months of work and started over) -- is a typically frisky, preening mash-up of glam and disco that contains a lot of you're-gonna-have-to-be-there moments. Fun, to be sure. But ... More >>

Music Picks: The Chapin Sisters, Pink Martini, Freestyle Fellowship, Mark Kozelek

Also Shonen Knife, the Vibrators, Karnivool and others

Live in L.A.: Make Music Pasadena (with Matt & Kim, Natalia Lafourcade, Warpaint), Opening Night at the Bowl, Freestyle Fellowship, Jamie Lidell, Erykah Badu, Billy Joe Shaver

Warpaint​Pasadena is used to its parades, but on Saturday its denizens will be traipsing around Old Town to get an earful of music rather than an eyeful of rose pedals. What's impressive about the annual Make Music Pasadena is how many constituencies the festival is serving over one day. With ... More >>

Music Picks: Baaba Maal, Snuffaluffagus & Rats, Carlene Carter and Friends, Country Throwdown

Also, Freestyle Fellowship, Bebe Buell, Billy Joe Shaver and others

MP3: Meet Soulster José James, Produced by Flying Lotus

José James.​It's not enough that Los Angeles beat scene figurehead Flying Lotus has a feverishly anticipated new album due out next month. Nor that he's wrangled a host of exceptional collaborators for Cosmogramma, one of which has a name that rhymes with Nom Stork. No, FlyLo needs more, w ... More >>

Music Picks: Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Bad Religion, Non

Also, The Wedding Present, Phil Alvin and others

Locked and Loaded: Nocando

Locked and Loaded: Nocando

The Low End Theory spawns a thrilling, progressive L.A. rap album

Project Blowed Celebrates Its 15th Anniversary Tonight at Little Temple

Tonight at Little Temple in Silver Lake, the legendary, influential hip hop night Project Blowed will celebrate its 15th anniversary with an appearance by the Freestyle Fellowship. The club, which grew out of The Good Life open mic night in Leimert Park ... well, hell, since the late Brendan Mul ... More >>

Shafiq Husayn, Sa-Ra Creative Partners and the Sound of Leimert Park Hip-Hop

Zulu rising (again)

Music Picks: Sky Saxon Tribute, Daddy Kev, Grace Jones, The Mekons

Also, Jarvis Cocker, Regina Spektor, Ida Maria, Themselves and others.

Busdriver: Crushed Groove

"Your least favorite rapper/With a haircut like a pineapple/Wearing khakis torn/With a voice like a high soprano."

Rock Picks: Mark Eitzel, Wanda Jackson, Dan Deacon, Heartless Bastards

Plus, Hecuba, James Pants, Angus & Julia Stone and others

Movie Reviews: Miss March, Race to Witch Mountain, Sunshine Cleaning

Also, The Cake Eaters, The Secrets and more

This Is the Life: Ava Duvernay’s Doc Sets the Record Straight on Influential L.A. Hip-Hop Scene

Up With People Under the Stairs

Hip-hop duo celebrates a decade in L.A.

Tonight at the El Rey: People Under the Stairs Come Up for Some Air

"We'd been around the world ten times and done Glastonbury, Redding, and Leeds before people had even thought about leaving LA. And we've never been heralded by any local media."

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

Four on the floor

Rock Picks: Lucy Lawless, The Dagons, Big Daddy Kane and more

For the week of Jan. 25-31

Dope Architecture

RJD2, ACEYALONE at El Rey Theater, February 17

Can You See It

L.A.’s underground Visionaries make “honest music for the masses”

13 Great CD Reissues You May Have Never Heard Of

Ring of the Fellowship

Champion Birdwatchers

Apocalypse Nowhere

New Music

Babes in Babylon

All Grown Up

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

Fog Heart

New discs

Down for the Good Life

A Unified Revolution Called Jurassic 5

Roll With the New

L.A.’s hip-hop underground keeps it . . . “real”

Work the Angles

Dilated Peoples in the main event

Lunatik Derelikts

Free 2 B V & Legacy

Beat Seeker

Don't punk Julio G

For the Record

The life and premature death of Mary’s Danish

Generation XX

20 years of covering the unheard music