Kool Keith

Tokimonsta Leaves the Nest

The producer's new album is on a big-time label

Schmoozing 101 or Making Your Crippling Social Anxiety Work For You

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 >>

Our Most Popular Stories of 2012

It was a great year for the L.A. Weekly music section and our West Coast Sound blog. On the print side, we specialized in well-reported profiles, news stories, and essays that helped our readers understand better the music they love. On the blog we churned out compulsively-readable pieces that start ... More >>

Is Riff Raff Serious?

One thing's for certain: This maddeningly inscrutable white rapper is more entertaining than you are

Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List

​Editor's note: In conjunction with our music issue we rolled out the top 20 L.A. rap albums of all time this week, as picked by Ian Cohen, Rebecca Haithcoat, Jeff Weiss and Ben Westhoff. But the list was broken up into four posts, which can get a bit unwieldy, so we've compiled the full list ... 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 >>

Pssst- L.A. Record's Throwing a Secret Show This Saturday!

​Must be something about how sweltering temps have suddenly gotten in the city: All we wanna do is strip and keep it on the down low (mostly 'cause it's too hot to stir up a storm of gossip). But! We're telling secrets tonight, in particular the one we and we alone just got wind of. Who else ... More >>

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

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

Free Download: What do YOU think of Das Racist's New Mixtape?

Genius or the opposite? Das Racist​Everybody on the indie blogosphere, particularly those sections of the indie blogosphere devoted to buzzband hip hop that white indie kids like, are all up abuzz buzzbanding about the recently dropped FREE new mixtape by the curiously named collective Das Rac ... More >>

The Continuing Adventures of Squeak E. Clean

The star-studded N.A.S.A. project by L.A.'s best-connected producer gets a remix

What's Method Man's Cheap Wine of Choice? Why Did Tom Waits Want to Hang Out with Kool Keith? Which Rapper Moonlights As Lingerie Designer?: N.A.S.A.'s DJ Squeak E. Clean Tells It All

N.A.S.A. reloaded: Squeak E. Clean (front) and collaborator DJ Zegon ​On this week's print edition of the LA Weekly, Drew Tewksbury interviews DJ Squeak E. Clean, aka Sam Spiegel, aka Spike Jonze's brother, aka the man behind the star-studded N.A.S.A. project. Spiegel's N.A.S.A. concept album ... More >>

ODB Lives!: N.A.S.A. Releases New Video for Ol' Dirty Bastard, Karen O, and Fatlip Track

N.A.S.A. Releases New Video for Ol' Dirty Bastard, Karen O, and Fatlip Track

Rapping Memes: Chatroulette of the future?

Rapping Memes: Chatroulette of the future?

MP3 Exclusive: Machinedrum Remixes Ninjasonik's "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant"

Diana Levine​Brooklyn crunk-punk freaks Ninjasonik play Spaceland on Thursday night, which almost undoubtedly means that, in the words of frontman Telli Gramz, "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant." The group's mix of hard-partying beats and hyper-sexual irreverence makes for a wild and bawdy soup th ... More >>

Cash Reward Offered for Stolen Dublab Cassettes, Money Mark No Longer a Suspect

Sadness unspooled.​Last week, we hipped you to a free Friday night event hosted by the Dublab crew over at Silver Lake's Hyperion Tavern. This special edition of the typically great Calling All Kids night was to be soundtracked completely by DJ'd cassette music and thus, it was dubbed Top Tape ... More >>

Shopping For Valentine's Day on Hollywood Blvd. with Kool Keith [NSFW]

​Kool Keith waited for the rain to let up on Sunset Blvd & Vine. The corner, once flanked by prostitutes and drag queens like a scene from Pretty Woman, now has a Borders bookstore sitting on it. Here Kool Keith drinks tea with producer Yeti and rapper/allies Bushman and Denis Deft, describing ... More >>

Rock Picks: Van Dyke Parks, Chicago Underground Duo, Rickie Lee Jones

Also, Clipse, Imaad Wasif, Josh Charles and others

Sweet Valentine's

LA and Affiliated (and Random) New Releases, August 4, 2009

A selection of new releases for beginning of the end of summer 2009. Los Angeles-related releases out this week: The Dub Club, which takes place every Wednesday night at the Echoplex, has brought to LA some of Jamaican music's most important and legendary figures, and has been recording and int ... More >>

Coachella: Indio Times 10

Goldenvoice’s Paul Tollett on the decade-old music festival

Rock Picks: Everest, Mumiy Troll, Busta Rhymes

Also, Faun Fables, Chris Darrow tribute, Allen Toussaint and others

N.A.S.A.'s DJ Squeak E. Clean: Ready for Liftoff

Teams with Tom Waits, David Byrne, MIA, Santogold, Spank Rock, RZA, Ghostface Killah, Kanye West and others to create The Spirit of Apollo

Rock Picks: Raveonettes, Amebix, Thorns of Life

Also, the Head Cat, the Spanks, Jimmy Webb and others

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 >>

Kanye West goes to space, sees weird lady mannequin there

Kanye West with Rihanna and N.E.R.D., April 21, Nokia Theatre L.A. Live If you're going see Kanye West's second of two shows at the Nokia tonight, you should bone up on the narrative, because like all big ticket stage spectacles – Cats, Stomp, “Oh, Streetcar!” – there’s kinda sorta a half ... More >>

Concerts and Tickets Coming Up

Autechre - 4/14, Echoplex Bad Religion - 3/4,5,11,13, House of Blues Bamboozle (All-American Rejects, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore) - 4/5, Verizon Amphitheater Bamboozle (My Chemical Romance, Anti-Flag, Saves the Day, Chiodos) - 4/6, Verizon Amphitheater Bjorkestra - 3/9 , Safari Sam's Black Keys ... More >>

Spoon at the Henry Fonda, 9/10

Wired Magazine brings a bunch of futuristic goodies to the Henry Fonda Theater to entertain the folks between sets by Kool Keith and Spoon. Click here to see a gallery of shots from the concert by Timothy Norris. Photos by Timothy Norris.

Rock Picks

For the week of December 14 � 21

stones throw discog

Rebel Central

The fantastical real-life story of L.A.�s Stones Throw Records, a hip-hop legend in the making

Rock PIcks

For the week of Nov. 24 - 30

Down and Delirious in Mexico City

Music Picks

For the week of June 1 - 7

L.A. Weekly Music Awards 03

L.A. Weekly Music Awards 2003

Cool Schmool

N*E*R*D want theirs

Motor City Breakdown

Freeways� hot fahren in the summertime

Welcome to the Machine

The musician and the development deal

Dr. Kool's Pop Quiz

Keith Thornton, Ph.d., an old professor from the new school, knows rap is here to test you

Rap and Revelation

Words to the wise from Blood of Abraham

Junkman�s Journey

Beck at the crossroads

L.A. Weekly Music Awards 2000

If You See Kay

Paul �n� Princess: Very stimulating!

Word According to B.I.G.

Darkness Audible

An interview with Me'Shell Ndeg�ocello

Master of the Game

Kool Keith of the no-rule school

Can Blue Men Play the Whites?

These Just In

Welcome, new things