The Black Eyed Peas

Music Picks: FIDLAR, Muse and Lady Gaga

2NE1 - Nokia Theatre - August 24, 2012

2NE1 Nokia Theatre 08-24-12 See also: K-pop Till You Drop: The Skinny on the Korean Boy and Girl Groups That Get Major Play in Koreatown 2NE1's first international tour brought the K-pop girl group to Nokia Theatre on Friday. The show felt like a stellar girls night out, and you could tell they w ... More >>

The Story of a Jewish Guy Who Did Crack and Lived in a Bus, and Now Makes Mexican Music

Growing up Jewish in Southeast Los Angeles with Communist parents who worked alongside the Black Panthers, Wil Abers never seemed to fit in. "I struggled with my identity living around Mexicans and African-Americans, while being white and seeing my parents fight against people in power," says Aber ... More >>

Four Reasons Lollapalooza Needs EDM

By Ian Traas See Also:EDC 2012: The Underground Has Left The Building Dave Grohl: His Grammys Speech About Electronic Music Was Bullshit [Slideshow] Lollapalooza 2012: The PeopleJustice at Lollapalooza, 8/5/12Ten things your Lollapalooza outfit says about youWith every year that passes, it feels li ... More >>

EDC 2012: Calvin Harris Plays CDs of Himself Singing

See also: EDC Vegas Pulls Plug on Music Due to High Winds Dance music is fighting for its soul. The charts (Rihanna, Flo Rida) are filled with tracks that borrow from the ecstatic trance and pulsing grooves of electronic dance music. The last time pop was so infatuated with the floor was 1979, the ... More >>

My 4-Year-Old Twin Sons Have Terrible Taste In Music

So, here's how my sons started listening to lite rock. Not long ago, my wife was out grocery shopping (aka grocery shopping). I was at home taking care of my 4-year-old twin sons (aka playing on the Internet and being really clever on Twitter). They were practicing writing letters and numbers at t ... More >>

Top Five Most Overrated Female Musician Sex Symbols

See also: *Top 20 Sexiest Female Musicians of All Time: The Complete List *The Most Overrated Male Musician Sex Symbols Last month we offered up our top 20 sexiest female musicians list, and were delighted that everyone agreed with our choices! Just kidding; we were more annoyed that folks suggest ... More >>

Green Day Never Sold Out, You Just Got Old and Complacent

One of the most mainstream punk bands since the new millennium, Green Day has faced criticism for selling out ever since releasing 2004's American Idiot -- some would say as far back as after the release of 1994's Dookie. Fuck that. They didn't sell out. In fact, American Idiot and 21st Century Br ... More >>

Mama, I Don't Want to Die! My 4-Year-Old Identifies With Freddie Mercury

I have twin 4-year-old sons. They have normal names, but I mostly call them Bay and Meechy. I tried to explain to them how they earned those nicknames once. It took a good three minutes (the names' origins are vaguely associated to The Wire and the Black Mafia Family, naturally). As soon as I was do ... More >>

Christmas Rapping: Jim Carrey, Busta Rhymes, And Eazy-E Bring The Ho, Ho, Hoes

​While visions of sugarplum fairies might be dancing in your head this time of year, it's going to take a little more to bring your Christmas party to the next level. While the traditional seasonal standards are... standard, the surefire way to put the star on your tree -- or the eggs in you ... 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.

Meet Speak, Who Co-Wrote Kreayshawn's "Gucci Gucci"

BrassSpeak​It's an August afternoon in Hollywood, and the shaggy-bearded rapper Speak is snacking on mac 'n' cheese in a recording studio at Atlantic Records. He doesn't seem like he belongs here. For starters, he's wearing beach bum attire: sun-bleached peach board shorts and Sperry Top-Sid ... More >>

Why This Song Sucks: Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger," featuring Christina Aguilera

[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.] Song: Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger," featuring Christina Aguilera History: God (likely) intended for Maroon 5 to be an important-but-middling critic's darling, ... More >>

Will.i.am To Star In Los Angeles County Public Service Announcement About Ecstasy And Raves

blackeyedpeas.comWill.i.am says let's NOT get e-tarded.​We're not sure if e-tards will look at a public service announcement and renounce their drug-taking ways, but your tax dollars will be put to work to that end anyway. The county of Los Angeles is producing a public service announcement t ... More >>

Top Ten Videos to Feed Your Inner Gay Dude on Ecstasy, by DJ/VJ Ray Rhodes' Club Tigerheat

Lina Lecaro Videos and vamps- Tigerheat eye candy​Wanna see the hottest hits and soon-to-be hits really pop on the dance floor? There really is no place like Tigerheat, the exuberant, mostly gay gathering held every Thursday at Avalon. It'd been a while since we popped in, so we forgot just ho ... More >>

Coming of No Age

The Smell darlings graduate to the Hollywood Bowl (with a Craigslist amp)

Over the Weekend: Flashing Back with Slash, Smashing Pumpkins, Headbangers and Felines at the Sunset Strip Music Festival

Lina Lecaro Fergie gets skankalicious performing with Slash at SSMF​ [See also Timothy Norris' slideshow "Sunset Strip Music Festival 2010"] Whether you're 20, 40 or 60 years old, grew up in Los Angeles or hopped right off the bus ala Axl Rose in "Welcome to the Jungle," if you're a music fan ... More >>

Hollywood Youth Pride Hopes To Help Young People In L.A.

Steve La​A group of activists marched down Sunset Blvd in Hollywood Sunday heading toward the first Hollywood Youth Pride, an event dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered young people -- a demographic increasingly vulnerable to homelessness, prostitution and illicit drug use, ac ... More >>

DJ Q&A: A Few Questions For Grum, Who Spins Tonight At Avalon

​Scot dance music sensation Grum, born Graeme Shepherd, creates unabashedly pretty, pop-infused tunes ("Can't Shake The Feeling") and has had his debut long-player, Heartbeats, picked up by U.S. club label supreme Ultra. The accessible, feel-good nature of his choonage has inspired comparisons ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Flight of the Conchords at the Hollywood Bowl

[See Timothy Norris' slideshow here.] Timothy NorrisFlight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement​ "Finally, comedy the way it's supposed to be--in an outdoor arena with disguised shrubs," joked Eugene Mirman, one of the three comics who opened for Flight of the Conchords at the ... More >>

Cruisin' for a Boozin'

10 L.A. bars worth diving into

Coachella Q&A: DJ Richie Hawtin Speaks About Technology And The State Of American Electronic Music

​We caught up with Richie Hawtin, a.k.a. Plastikman, at Coachella over the weekend and asked him a few questions about technology and the state of North American dance music. Hawtin has pioneered the use of Ableton Live software to atomize and reconstruct tracks on-the-fly during DJ performanc ... More >>

DJ Tiesto Rocks Peak Time Set At Coachella

Dennis Romero​For those about to rock, we ... ask that you step aside and make room for 50,000 raging fans of the operatic dance sound known as trance. For all of Coachella's claims to being a desert temple of rock-god worship (Muse, Them Crooked Vultures, The Dillinger Escape Plan), the peak- ... More >>

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 >>

Nightranger Looks Back at '09 Fashion and Music

Nacional Records on Fire: The Ten Best Spanish-Language/Latin Albums 2009

By Christopher Lopez It's been a year of surprises in "Latin music," (whatever that catch-all genre term for Spanish-language music means in 2009). Reggaetón continues fading, albeit slowly, and the industry's mainstays aren't garnering the attention they used to. Case in point: Don Omar's summer ... More >>

Rock Picks: Ozomatli, Harper Simon, Spain

Also, Tenacious D, Lady Gaga, Local Natives and others

Last Night: The Crystal Method Performs Surprise Live Set

View more photos in Colin Young-Wolff's "The Crystal Method Secret Show @ Echoplex" slideshow. Colin Young-Wolff​If electronic dance music ever gets its own This Is Spinal Tap-like parody, The Crystal Method would have to be the film's hard-partying, amplifier-past-10 inspiration. Not that t ... More >>

HARD Haunted Mansion: Closest We've Been to the Third Reich

View more photos from HARD night one and night two here. Anna WebberUrgent rush for the dead alien​Halloween at the HARD Haunted Mansion brought out the big guns for L.A.'s all-age night walkers and candy ravers. The sold-out event was held at the historic Shrine Auditorium, a landmark event ... More >>

U2 at the Rose Bowl: Concert Porn for the Masses

It was cool. It was a big Happening with flashing lights, lots of color, inspiration, 100,000 people screaming along in unison, moved by the pure ... spectacle of it. If we were in North Korea, these songs would have been about the Supreme Leader and we would have all been flashing colored placards ... More >>

Breakestra Celebrates the Release of Dusk Til Dawn Tonight at El Rey

If you're a music fan in LA, no doubt you know Breakestra, whose work in that gray area between breakbeat, old school funk, Latin grooves, jazz and soul comines to create something both fresh and timeless. Tonight the legendary LA live breakbeat band Breakestra celebrates the release of its new albu ... More >>

Queer Town: GLAAD Hesitant to Criticize Director Todd Holland

On Monday morning, L.A. Weekly broke the story that openly gay, Emmy-winning director Todd Holland told an audience at Outfest on Sunday afternoon that he advises young, gay male actors to "stay in the closet" if they want to succeed in Hollywood. By Monday afternoon, gay bloggers and their readers ... More >>

Thursday Night Music Stuff in LA: The Monks film at Silent Movie Theater, DFA at the Roxy, Rootdown Soundclash at Little Temple

I love LA. Love it love it love it (except when Indie 103 gets tossed off the airwaves). One reason: nights like tonight, when the music offerings are so far-flung and wide-open that my proto-punk gene is being pulled one direction, my turntablist strand is being pulled another, and my disco-house b ... More >>

You Can Feel It All Over: Partying on Election Night With Hollywood's Godless Liberal Elites and Lowlifes

Keeping score at Big Wangs, the Century Plaza and the Echoplex

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

Four on the floor

Will i Am Offers Obama Handjob Via Campaign Song

As the voters of Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont and Ohio filed to the polls yesterday to help decide the Democratic Party's nomination for President, will.i.am., the capitalization averse mastermind of the Black Eyed Peas continued his steadfast efforts to help elect Senator Barack Obama of Illinois ... More >>

Hardcorey

Corey Hart, Moby and Tarina Tarantino's “Tokyo Hardcore”

Rappers Who'll Make You Dial for Dollars

And post-feminist pop from one-hit wonders

Bong Hits, Bluegrass, Pervy Puppets, and Tom Petty As Hipster

Free the Peoples!

On 20/20, Dilated Peoples saygoodbye to Kanye, return to basics. Indie snobs approve

Bang a Bong

Dilated Peoples: L.A. b-boys hit the NBA

Thank You, J Dilla

grammy diary

Tue., Feb. 7 LL Cool J at the House of Blues Wed., Feb. 8 The Grammys at the Staples Center Now, for my personal awards

Stumbling Toward 2006

Are 'Friends' Electro?

Champion Birdwatchers

The Misfits

Rap and Revelation

Words to the wise from Blood of Abraham

Roll With the New

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