Kurupt

Dom Kennedy: Reluctant Businessman

The rapper built a huge fan base through Darwinian promotional methods

Top 10 L.A. Hip-Hop Producers in History

For better or worse, L.A. hip-hop is strongly identified with gangsta rap, and that genre is mostly identified with its rappers and their outsized personas. But the classic Los Angeles albums wouldn't be what they are without the incredible sonic textures that define them, the funk, electro, rock, a ... More >>

Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar - BET Live - June 29, 2013

Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Miguel, Schoolboy Q Staples Center 6/29/13 It may feel like summer all year long in L.A., but there's still something special about summer in L.A. On Saturday night at Staples Center Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar co-headlined as part of the BET Experience event ... More >>

Tupac's California Dreamin': New Book Details the Recording of All Eyez on Me

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 >>

I Go Out With the Group Substance Abuse and a Rapper Who Tries To Convince Me to Ho

[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 MCs Subz and Eso Tre from Substance Abuse, who are known for their well-regarded 2006 album Overproof and their just-rele ... More >>

KDAY, the Gangsta Rap Oldies Station, Breaks New Ground by Playing Music From the Bad Old Days

Lil' Kim - Key Club - 6/13/12

Sean Healy Presents Lil' Kim Key Club 6/13/12 We have all been unfair to Lil' Kim. Try to imagine how scary it must have been to be the first female rapper to lay bare her sexual proclivities for the entire world to examine. Even if Notorious B.I.G. ghostwrote her words (as has been alleged) it' ... 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 >>

Best of Coachella: Sunday, April 22

See also: Our complete Coachella coverage By the third day of Coachella's second weekend -- the sixth and final day of this year's festival -- folks had more or less learned to ignore the dust and the heat. Here are our intrepid writers' favorite things about the final hours of the 2012 event.

Coachella Weekend Two Tickets Are Selling Waaaaaay Below Face Value

See also: *Our complete Coachella coverage *Coachella Preview 2012: Everything You Need to Know About the Performers Maybe it's the glut of tickets resulting from the addition of a second weekend, maybe it's because everyone hated the Tupac hologram; for whatever reason, Coachella tickets can be h ... More >>

Public Enemy - Occupy Skid Row - 1/15/12

Public Enemy, Yo-Yo, Kurupt, King T, Kid Frost, Egyptian Lover Downtown, Gladys Ave. and 6th St. 1/15/11 See also: *Public Enemy and Matt & Kim - Sunset Strip Music Festival - 8/20/2011 *Our slideshow of the Skid Row Street Festival Public Enemy is known for fighting the powers that be. So even ... More >>

'Occupy Skid Row' Concert Featuring Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Kurupt in Doubt, LAPD Says: It Doesn't Have Permit

See our review of the festivities here. Updated at the bottom with what went down. First posted at 4:33 p.m. Friday. A planned "Occupy Skid Row" free street concert Sunday featuring Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Kurupt and other hip-hop artists is in doubt, police tell the Weekly. The Los Angeles Co ... More >>

Know Your L.A. Hip-Hop Dances: Who, Exactly, Is Allowed To Crip Walk?

[Editor's Note: Writer Jessica A. Koslow is a USC master's student writing her thesis on krumping. Know Your L.A. Hip-Hop Dances explores some of the most popular street dances in our city.] Crip Walk "I'm C-Walkin' on the mutherfuckin' concrete," raps Ice Cube on "Go To Church." Other Crip Walker ... More >>

OverDoz - The Roxy - 11/22/11

See also: Meet OverDoz: L.A.'s Freakiest, Cheekiest Collective OverDoz The Roxy 11/22/11 A beat before the curtain dropped on their show last night, OverDoz's de facto leader, Kent, addressed the audience soberly, "We did this shit all by ourselves." He could have been referring to any number of ... More >>

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: 15-11

​ 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. The party ... 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 >>

G-Funk All-Star Kurupt Sails Uncharted Rap Waters

Compton Rapper Game Returns to an Industry That's Gone Soft

Will his old tricks still work?

D.O.C.'s Top Five D.O.C. Ghostwritten Songs

Brandon Showers​In the paper this week I get inside the head of D.O.C., who ghostewrote the bulk of the early Ruthless Records catalog and is all over The Chronic and Doggystyle. His own solo career was ascendent on the strength of his platinum debut No One Can Do It Better before a car accide ... More >>

1st Generation at Club Nokia, 7/23/11

Ian Cohen​1st Generation Club Nokia July 23, 2011 Better than: Compton High School's annual talent show, but possibly not. It's been said that you can instantly judge the economic health of a neighborhood based on the prevalence of barriers: fences, security systems, especially speed bumps. ... More >>

"H is for Ho": Sesame Street Does "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)"

"Well, if Kurupt gave a ..." Kermit Tha Kingpin ​If Nate Dogg's untimely passing has a silver lining, it's been the mass revisiting of his vast catalog of songs. We found a Nate neophyte (nope, not even "Regulate") and were giving him the YouTube tour when we stumbled upon a Sesame Street ve ... More >>

Pulitzer-Prize Winner Jonathan Gold Writes Moving Nate Dogg Obituary for LA Weekly

Christopher Victorio for OC WeeklyMr. and Mrs. Broadus before Nate Dogg's memorial service Saturday ​ Within the structure of a classic G-funk track, a musical form as precise as a Mozart string quintet, after the opening skit, the establishment of the minimal beat, the rapper's expository ver ... More >>

Music to Pick Up/Download

Music Picks: Amy Kuney, Whispertown, the Civil Wars, Jake Bellows, Plan B

Also, Thom Bresh, Pictureplane, James Intveld and others

Over the Weekend: Rock the Bells Hip-Hop Festival, featuring Snoop, Wu-Tang, Lauryn Hill

Kasey StokesMethod Man of Wu-Tang Clan​As it turns out, you should not fuck tha police. Our Rock the Bells road trip began promisingly: left for San Bernardino early, avoided traffic. We'd maintained a cool objectivity all week, but now were free to exclaim over the lineup, a mix of ones-to- ... More >>

Music Picks: Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Bad Religion, Non

Also, The Wedding Present, Phil Alvin and others

East Coast Clobbers West Coast in 2009 Pazz & Jop Music Poll

Well, if you're keeping track at home, the so-called "west coast sound" got clobbered this year in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll of the year's best music. And when we say "clobbered," we actually mean "beaten to a bloody pulp." Consider this: In the list of the top 100 albums o ... More >>

The Continuing Education of Freddie Gibbs: A Follow-Up To This Week's Cover Story

​ Thursday's cover story on Gary, Indiana-raised rapper Freddie Gibbs, engendered a substantial response within the hip-hop blogosphere, with prominent sites Rap Radar, Nah Right, Fake Shore Drive, and The Smoking Section, all taking note. Even Wale twittered a congratulations message. Cons ... More >>

A Little Something for the Lakers Fans: Great Songs About Our Team

It might be a hellish commute tonight with a host of Lakers flag-sporting vehicles anxiously crawling across the freeways in the hopes that their drivers can get home in time to catch the first game of the NBA Finals, where the Lakers square off against Orlando's Magic at 6 p.m. Instead of stressin ... More >>

Weiss' 50 Best Hip-Hop Songs of 2008 (#50-26)

Over the next two weeks, myself and a very talented cadre of contributors will be emulating the book above. Unlike said tome, it won't cost money and you'll get free MP3s--which, presumably, serve a tangible purpose. Now go cry into your near-beer, Phillip Ardagh, you lovable rogue. 50. Redman ft ... More >>

The B-Sides: Bishop Lamont Interview

Q: What was it like for you growing up in Los Angeles during the 80s? A: It was the LA of the Reagan administration. Drugs were really heavy in the streets at that time…more crack addicts…crack babies. It was a good time simultaneously because there was more creativity within the music and it ... More >>

The iPol Shuffle: What Should Be On Obama's iPod From Now Until Election Day

Rock Picks: DJ Quik, Alejandro Escovedo, Ratatat

Also, the Bad Plus, Amos Lee, Built to Spill, and more

Snoop Goes Country! Snoop Dogg Live at Fox Studios, March 6

photos by Timothy Norris Snoop Dogg gigged with an 18-piece backing band in a Fox Studio sound room last night for the Nissan Live series shown on Yahoo! Music, and now that I’ve pimped the corporate affiliates that made this evening of taping possible, let’s just say right off the bat: I have ... More >>

Bishop Lamont-The Next Great West Coast Hope?

I...listened to all that Death Row stuff....and Lords Of The Underground, Busta Rhymes, Redman and Keith Murray, where your takes had to be so clean and ill to get off the phonetics that you were dropping. Your lines had to be crisp. Other cats don’t come from that school. It took me studying R ... More >>

Pimp My Geo

Xzibit: Chrome wheels, platinum records, silver screens (and the dirt behind)

Moment of Truce

After a five-year war, Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound reunite for love, profits and West Coast pride. Ben Quiñones catches the buzz.

Music Picks

For the week of June 1 - 7

The Mad Science of Fredwreck

Snoop, Xzibit and Dr. Dre all praise the Palestinian-American freak of beats

Live in LA

The Big Bang

The Undeath of West Coast Flow

Our Dark Blue Places

Ellroy via Shelton, plus Till Human Voices Wake Us

Get Loose

Afro-beaten, Afro-burned

Beat Seeker

Don't punk Julio G

Myth Master

The fabrication of Ms. Foxy Brown