Ice Cube (Rapper)

Five Great Lesser-Known DJs To See At Coachella

For dance fans there has been little difference between Coachella and Electric Daisy Carnival in recent years, except that the former supplemented its Tiesto-Kaskade-Deadmau5 lineups with alt-rock while EDC did so with dubstep and drum 'n' bass. See also: Everything you need to know about Coachella ... More >>

KDAY Is Closing? A Eulogy to the Best Station in L.A.

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," normally appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] "Remember KDAY?" Tupac asked that question on "To Live & Die in LA," but the answer was obvious. Makaveli never even lived in Southern Califor ... More >>

The 20 Worst Albums Of The '90s: 10-1

The 20 Worst Albums Of The '90s: 20-11 Sure, you had the Bill Clinton blowjob scandal, OJ, Pakistan and India going nuclear, mad cow disease, the Rodney King decision, and Titanic. But what made the '90s truly awful was its music. That's not to say that there weren't bright spots -- early Beck, say ... 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 >>

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 >>

Music Picks: No Doubt, Nikki Hill, Alice Cooper

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 >>

Is The Dove Shack's "Summertime in the LBC" the Perfect Summer Song?

[Editor's note: Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. Be sure to also check out the archives.] See also: KDAY, the Gangsta Rap Oldies Station, Breaks New Ground by Playing Music From the Bad Old Days This is the city and the season for the summer jam. Yo ... More >>

N.W.A's MC Ren Now Lives 
in Palm Springs

The best fake fact on Wikipedia is that MC Ren studied classical literature at Brown. It's a strain of truthiness so absurd as to be almost believable. Except when I mention it to the former enforcer of N.W.A, he roars. "Fuck no, I didn't go to no Brown," says the man born Lorenzo Patterson. "I didn ... More >>

KMG the Illustrator: RIP to The Above the Law Rapper

[Editor's note: Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. Be sure to also check out the archives.] *Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List *Top Ten Rap Albums For People Who Don't Know Shit About Hip-Hop If you ever go to a nightclub ... 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 >>

Toni Monroe Is a Big Beautiful Rapper

See also: Top Ten Sexiest Fat Chicks in Music Toni Monroe is beautiful. She has a powerful stage presence, and doesn't need a hype man. But yet, she's something of a hard sell. For one thing, she's white. For another, as her press release says, she is rap's "biggest" new artist -- a reference to he ... More >>

El Prez Saw a Liquor Store Go Up In Flames

[Editor's note: All this week West Coast Sound is speaking with rappers and writers whose work has been influenced by the L.A. riots, to coincide with their 20th anniversary on April 29.] South L.A.-raised rapper El Prez is all about the city. He named one of his albums Animal Style! after the In-N ... More >>

Tupac on the L.A. Riots: "I Hate to Say I Told You So, But I Told You So"

See also: Our coverage of the 15th anniversary of Tupac's death Tupac Shakur was a gangsta rapper of the old mold; he called himself a thug, sure, but he was also quite conscious when it came to social issues, particularly those impacting the black community. The rare video below -- taken one wee ... More >>

Serengeti's Chin Music

See also: *Anticon MC Serengeti: The Quirkiest, Deepest Rapper *Free Download: Serengeti's "Tracks" Serengeti is wisecracking at Rex's Batting Cages in Inglewood, while hacking at 90 mph heaters. The Chicago-raised, Mount Washington-based rapper riffing on a character in his raps, 45-year-old, Dit ... More >>

Never-Before-Seen Photos of Tupac and Eazy-E From New Book West Coast Hip Hop: A History In Photos

See also: Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List Michael Miller and Paul Stewart had capped a successful Kickstarter project and planned a digital imprint of their book, a collection of photographs from the golden era of West Coast hip hop, called West Coast Hip Hop: A Histo ... More >>

Steely Dan Fans Are Assholes

William Gibson called them "the most genuinely subversive" band in late-20th Century pop. Bryan Cranston sneaks winking references to them into Malcolm In The Middle and Breaking Bad episodes. Ice Cube sampled them and The Roots play them on Jimmy Fallon. Who are they? The gold standard in rock and ... More >>

Blue Ivy Carter: Top Five Worst Examples of Rap Nepotism

Barely two days after his and Beyonce's baby Blue Ivy Carter was born, Jay-Z put her on a song. "Glory" is a tribute to his new daughter, who closes the track out with a guest feature -- crying. Jay-Z may be starting his kid off young, but nepotism is standard practice among rap superstars. There' ... More >>

Bud Bundy, Original Gangsta

David Faustino parlayed his Married ... With Children fame into a hugely influential hip-hop party. Now he wants back into the scene.

Remember Our Top 20 L.A. Rap Albums? Here Are The Worst Records By Those Artists

​[Editor's note: Haterade Monday continues! Earlier in the day we told brought you the five dopiest Beach Boys songs (including one where Brian Wilson raps). And now, on the heels of our top 20 greatest L.A. rap albums of all time here's some more drivel from classic artists.] Hip-hop doesn' ... More >>

Ice Cube's Death Certificate Turns 20: The True Story Behind "My Summer Vacation"

​This week Ice Cube's Death Certificate celebrates its 20th anniversary. The album -- which we ranked number seven on our list of the top 20 greatest L.A. rap albums of all time -- is politically bombastic in a way hip-hop albums no longer are. Taking specific aim at the police, the government ... More >>

Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: 10-6

​See also Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums of All Time: 20-16 Editor's note: For our music issue, out on Thursday, Ian Cohen, Rebecca Haithcoat, Jeff Weiss and Ben Westhoff run down the top 20 L.A. rap albums of all time. We're unveiling the list all this week on West Coast Sound. 10. Freesty ... More >>

Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: 20-16

​Editor's note: For our music issue, out on Thursday, Ian Cohen, Rebecca Haithcoat, Jeff Weiss and Ben Westhoff run down the top 20 L.A. rap albums of all time. We're unveiling the list all this week on West Coast Sound. The party waits for no man. So while we watched the tubes for Detox, Los ... More >>

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: Ravi Shankar, Marilyn Scott, Duran Duran, Burkina Electric

Also, Emmylou Harris & Her Red Dirt Boys, Odd Future, Gillian Welch and others

Thurz on Reinventing Himself, U-N-I's Break-Up, and Why West Coast Hip Hop Hasn't Gone Mainstream (Yet)

Thurz​In "Los Angeles," the first single from Inglewood rapper Thurz's debut solo project, L.A. Riot-- out yesterday --a girl chirps, "To me, L.A. means home, sunny skies, and happy people." But in Thurz's next verse, he flips the city over to examine its underbelly, "Cats would raise a gun b ... More >>

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other: Our Off-the-Beaten Path Guide To Summer Festivals

​ One of the best parts about being at a festival are those moments you walk by a stage and have that "what the fuck" moment. It's when you hear something that just doesn't fit. It's the feeling some people probably had at Chaos In Tejas this summer when, coming from Unbroken's set, they stumble ... More >>

Music Picks: Prince, Amanda Jo Williams, Kendrick Lamar, Xzibit, Civet,

Also, Miguel, L.A. Bluegrass Situation, Heidecker and Wood, the Ditty Bops and others

Music Picks: Roseanne Cash, Theophilus London, Acid Mothers Temple

Also, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Raphael Saadiq, Wu Man and others

Insane Clown Posse: Exclusive Interview

Down (and out) with the Clown

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

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

Urban Nomad: Gettin' High with B-Real at SmokeOut Festival (Video Interview Exclusive Performance!)

Urban Nomad, the gregarious Jeremiah Alexis, will be shooting exclusive video for LA Weekly. Make sure you check out the previous installments here. The URBAN NOMAD gets smoked out by B-Real of Cypress Hill's SmokeOut Fest. B-Real talks about medical marijuana and the certification needed to make s ... More >>

Movie Reviews: The Tillman Story, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Brotherhood

Also, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, A Film Unfinished and more

When Bad Movies Make for Good Laughs

Dead Meadow To Premier 'Three Kings' at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Who's got the sage?​Remember Three Kings, the David O. Russell war drama starring Ice Cube? And the original Three Kings, those bearded, robe-bedecked fellas that gave the Baby Jesus all that cool stuff? Well, there's a new Three Kings in town and it aims to bridge the gap between quirky gre ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Classic Lit and Classic Hip-Hop

Despite this weekend's downpour, and the subsequent rain traffic, Angelenos still hit the town. It's hard to resist the urge to leave the house when there's a tribute to classic literature at Bordello and a classic hip-hop artist at House of Blues. Wig Out! "Get Your Dickens On" Shannon Cottrell ... More >>

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

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

Four on the floor

Garrett Morris

Mr. Saturday Night

Movie Reviews: The Rocker, The House Bunny, Death Race

Also, America the Beautiful, The Longshots and more

Film Reviews: The Reaping, Are We Done Yet? and More

Alsoo reviews of Firehouse Dog, Sacco and Vanzetti and Operation Homecoming

Katt Williams

Young / Gifted / Beautiful / Black

L.A.’s Murs just wants to be your favorite rapper. Is that so wrong?

Smog Pop

The musical life of air pollution

Brother Man

L.A. rapper Kam and the politics of love

Before Bling

Hip-hop’s storied past

California Love

The Game and Daz bring gangsta back where it belongs

Dopest Throwback Jerseys Spotted

Black Like Who?

Notes on black film and the career of F. Gary Gray

Sticking It Where The Sun Shines

Santa Monica's gift to the world