Jeff Weiss

I have dozens of questions for former LAPD homicide detective Greg Kading, but only one really matters. “How sure are you about your theory of who killed Biggie and ’Pac?” “One hundred percent,” responds the lead investigator behind the task force commissioned by the city of L.A. to unravel the......

If you abandon your car and climb into the smog shrouding the Cypress Park intersection of the 5 and 110 freeways, you’ll discover a little-known arterial called the Arroyo Seco Parkway Walkway. There’s a stairwell reeking of urine and a homeless encampment, but otherwise it’s the semi-private secret of those......

Soulja Boy is somehow only 25. That’s barely old enough to rent a Bentley, but he’s been driving them since he had a license. It’s been nine years since “Crank That” created the template for DIY Internet rap stardom and the modern viral dance phenomenon. That’s the distance between the......

All Eyez on Me was our bible. That’s usually an overwrought cliché, but in this instance, it’s the only appropriate analogy. If you were a West Coast teenager in the 1990s, you illegally procured Thug Passion, memorized 2Pac’s blueprint to moneymaking and knew how to properly explain the differences between......

The request was so weird that it had to be true. About a month ago, the social media pages of DJ Dodger Stadium and their management blew up. Kanye West wanted to see them immediately. Could the dance-music duo come to his home studio in Calabasas? They said “Yes” faster......

The Grammys have misused their influence for three straight decades. Outside of flat earth society champions, no collective body has been so consistently incorrect. The Recording Academy didn’t recognize hip-hop as a worthy album art form until 1996. Young MC, Arrested Development and Iggy Azalea own statuettes, but Nas, 2Pac,......

Santa Ana will never be mistaken for southwest Atlanta, but tonight is as close as it’ll ever get. On a cold Thursday in January, a rowdy, all-ages mob of a thousand Orange County kids chants, bounces, sweats and yelps the most popular hooks and deep cuts of ATLien anti-gravity agent......

Nothing captures the spirit of a Southern California cookout better than DJ Quik’s “Pitch in on a Party.” So it’s only right that L.A.’s day-off anthem bumps silkily from the speakers at the opening of LocoL, the latest culinary banger from native son Roy Choi. It’s Martin Luther King Day......

If you want to understand King Lil G, start with Emiliano Zapata. According to family lore, L.A.’s most popular Latino rapper since Cypress Hill descends from the famed Mexican revolutionary. With mild imagination, it’s easy to draw parallels between the iconic advocate for the dispossessed and the socially conscious people’s......

Near the start of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, you’re reminded why he’s Quentin Tarantino. It’s not via violent shootout or gorgeous tracking shot across fresh snow but rather the brutal artfulness with which he uses music. The filmmaker sets a grotesque beating to “Apple Blossom,” a bittersweet marriage proposal......