Mobb Deep

Who's the All-Time Champion of Rap Beef on Twitter?

Twenty years ago, rap animosity was expressed via diss songs. Like, if someone pissed you off you went home, thought about it, went to a recording studio, pressed up your album, and sent it around. The object of your diss might not find out until six months later. More recently the rise of the mix ... 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 >>

Roc Marciano, In the Sunshine

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] The most cold-blooded and grimy New York rapper of the last decade lives by the Beverly Center. It's worlds removed from the drug-infested projects of hi ... More >>

La Coka Nostra Returns, With Scars

See also: Don't Call Him Country. Everlast is Hip-Hop, Dammit. In the back lounge of venerable Mid-Wilshire Irish pub Tom Bergin's, West Coast hip-hop supergroup La Coka Nostra members Daniel "Danny Boy" O'Connor, 43, and George "Slaine" Carroll, 34, take their seats at a table covered with creased ... More >>

Five Quite Good K-hop Albums

See also: *K-pop Till You Drop: The Skinny on Korean Boy and Girl Groups" *Reviewed: Drunken Tiger at the Jungle Concert In L.A., 12-02-11 This just in: the best South Korean music to get international play is not K-pop. Sorry. Much like J-pop, and their American cousins, y'know, girl bands and bo ... 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 >>

Phife Dawg Is Down With Posthumous Holograms, Likes Funyons

See Also: Michael Rapaport's A Tribe Called Quest Documentary A lazy reader of the internet would believe that since A Tribe Called Quest's 1998 breakup, Q-Tip has a platinum album and Grammy wins, while Phife Dawg has done little more than gotten a kidney transplant and eaten a bag of Funyons. Of ... More >>

Gangrene Get High, So High

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

Rap Industry Fan Fiction: Here Are Some Freestyled Stories About Tyga And Tyler, the Creator

Sure, you have your cosplay and your Star Trek, but Rap Industry Fan Fiction takes the genre to a place that it isn't know for going -- hip-hop. The brainchild of UNC history major Kate Davis Jones and grad Drew Millard, the site makes good on titles like "Ice Cube Shows Ice-T His Model Train Set" a ... More >>

Phlo Finister: A Portugese, Black, And Irish Former Model Who Sings R&B

Phlo Finister's hair is black and stick-straight. She's wearing Tims and a tight, cropped Tommy Hilfiger tank. Her boxers are puffed out of the approximately size 38 jeans that pool around her ankles. With her gold wire-rimmed sunglasses, she's Aaliyah, circa 1994. This is not what we expected. Th ... More >>

Evidence: A Conscious Rapper Who Doesn't Mind Being Called As Much

See also: Pictures Of Rappers' Cats (Including Evidence's Mr. Drummer) Evidence has a history as a tagger. An apt metaphor since, like graffiti, he's not loud and you can see him everywhere. But only if you're looking. The Los Angeles native came of age in the '90s with Dilated Peoples. Since the ... More >>

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

Will his old tricks still work?

Top Five Rapping Basketball Players Phil Jackson Might Actually Like

​Phil Jackson, of all people, recently had some harsh words for "Fix The Knicks," the odd, showtuney-tune penned by New York Knicks owner James Dolan. (You can hear it here.) Dolan needs either "a better lyricist or a better musician," Jackson said. Ouch! Of course, it's hard to disagree with ... More >>

UPDATE: More Artists Added to Rock the Bells 2011 Lineup

​ Originally published May 24, 2011, 8:18 p.m. New artists were just announced on the Rock the Bells 2011 lineup:

Music Picks: The Undertones, Prince, Eternal Summers, Check Yo Ponytail 2

Also, Earth, Wind & Fire, Tinie Tempah, Arctic Monkeys, Woodsman and others

Listen: Deported DJ Kutmah Returns to Music with 'Throwing Stones' Podcast Ft. Fugees, Flying Lotus

Kutmah's "Throwing Stones"​Last week, L.A. Weekly contributor Jeff Weiss sat down with Dublab/Low End Theory DJ and artist Kutmah to talk about his controversial deportation. It was the first interview Kutmah, born Justin McNulty, had granted since being pulled out of his Mt. Washington home ... More >>

Last Night: Brother Ali and the Night of Three E-V's (Evidence, Evelyn and ... Everlast)

It's easy to think that underground hip-hop is dead. The Internet has equalized everything to the point that there isn't much difference between Mos Def's and Mickey Factz's marketing plan, or Elzhi's and Eminem's, or Wale's and Will.i.am's. During the WWWization of the rap world, the next generatio ... More >>

If the Lakers Were Rappers: A Study in Similitude

Prediction: If Kobe doesn't grow a mullet, the Lakers will take it in June. Kobe Bryant = Kanye West Raised in more affluent circumstances than their peers, Kobe and Kanye are not only among the best in their respective fields, they share a severe lack of humility and empathy. Mutually ol ... More >>

Hip-Hop's Greatest Al Green Samples

The Reverend, replicated

Outside Lands Day 3-We Have a Winner

Ted DiBiase knows a winner when he sees one. That's how he earned the nickname "The Million Dollar Man" when those Cash Money clowns were still learning to ice their first teeth. And rest assured, Teddy B. would've inevitably proclaimed Day 3 of Outside Lands, the winner of the match, even if he wo ... More >>

Outside Lands Day 1-Don't Quote Me On It, But I Think This Radiohead Band Has a Chance to Get Big

(all photos by Christopher Victorio) Don't expect much. No one with an iota of common sense would attend a music festival after being struck by the snarling combination of African Sleeping Sickness/Mono/Ricketts/Gout/Scurvy that waylaid me for a full two weeks of misery and and continues to leave ... More >>

A Tale of Two Samples: Fela Kuti's "Mr. Grammarticalogylisationalism Is the Boss" and The Roots' "I Will Not Apologize"

I'll leave the thorough sample de-constructions to Dan Love or O-Dub, but couldn't help but feel compelled to share a discovery I made the other day in my on-going quest to listen to every known bit of music ever recorded by Fela Kuti. Namely, the afro-beat derived sample for "I Will Not Apologiz ... More >>

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 >>

An Interview With Pete Rock

Pete Rock needs no introduction. His new album NY's Finest drops on Tuesday. While it might not be a classic on the level of a Soul Survivors or Mecca & The Soul Brother, it's a strong record with occasionally great moments. But buyer beware: Jim Jones yells "floooosssssiiiin'" no less than fo ... More >>

Check the Technique: Notes from the Golden Age

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

Weiss' Top 50 Albums of 2007 (#45-41))

45. Joe Buhdha Presents Klashnekoff: Lionheart: Tussle With the Beast [Low Life Records/Riddim Killa] Exactly three British rappers have managed to "break" the American market in this decade, and by "break" I mean getting the American music press to hype them as the best thing since Earl Grey a ... More >>

The 25 Best Hip-Hop Songs of 2007 Pt. 3 (#14-10)

Mental Note: Avoid guys with the nickname "Mad Dog." 14. Redman-"Blow Treez" Why did we have to wait until 2007 for Redman, the man who taught a generation of impressionable youths how to roll a blunt, to sample Bob Marley, the greatest blunt roller of them all? Flipping the halcyon palm-tree ... More >>

Everybody Do the Pigeon!

Underground L.A. rapper Pigeon John can’t help it — he’s weird

Music Picks

For the week of May 25 - 31

Inside the Box With the Super Dope Cops

Hustlers, gangsters, addicts and narcos are all trying to get their chippy on where it’s always Mardi Gras on crack

Live in LA

The Mad Science of Fredwreck

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

Get Loose

Afro-beaten, Afro-burned

Om Nia Merican

Sigh Language

A darker shade of AWOL One

Silver Screams

Music mutilates the movies

Word According to B.I.G.

A Dollar a Holler

Two sides of Nas' coin