Jeff Weiss

On the fourth song of Compton, the final album from Dr. Dre, gangsta rap’s Hippocrates lets us behind the myth. “All in a Day’s Work” invokes hard times before the fame and describes his first encounters with Eazy-E and Snoop Dogg. Interactions usually buried in careful branding rise to the......

This is how it’s supposed to happen. You begin with empty club nights and wind up with lines down the block. You refuse to stop evolving even after nearly a decade of creative left turns. You operate at a loss until you start winning. You constantly take risks and experiment......

Even gangsta rappers need the occasional vacation. For the last half-decade, hard-working hedonist Problem has increased Compton’s gross domestic product. Between 2011 and 2013, the father of seven dropped seven projects through his independent collective, Diamond Lane Music. Highlights included a DJ Drama mixtape (The Separation), a full-length collaboration with......

Fatherhood hasn’t softened America’s best gangsta rapper. It’s merely made him more armed. “I had 50 guns, now I have 100,” says Freddie Gibbs, maybe joking but probably not. “I’ve bought two guns for every month that she’s been alive. It’s brought out the protector in me.” Gibbs credits his......

Falling in and out of love was hard enough before Instagram. Social media creates a minefield of mind games. Only the most joyous mo-ments are captured. Cameos from strangers inspire jealousy. These agonies supply the subtext for Lena Fayre’s new darkwave pop EP, Is There Only One? The question in......

Julian Petty doesn’t seem like a lawyer. The Leimert Park resident comes off scholarly and patient, not slick and fast-talking. It’s as though he’s been sent by the California Bar Association to combat every sheisty lawyer joke ever told. Then you start talking and quickly understand why he’s become a......

Carl Jung once claimed that “nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.” Chelsea Wolfe remains only partially convinced. “I don’t really believe in dream interpretation. It just depends on how much stress is in your life, and your mind will work that out in its own way,”......

A quarter-century ago, Q-Tip reminded us that things move in cycles. A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory grafted hip-hop back onto its jazz roots, and supplied the name for L.A.’s most influential club night in recent memory. Understanding music history is recognizing the cycles. We’re currently in the “listen......

You’re inevitably familiar with the xylophone. In Western culture, it’s a staple in children’s music classes — a toy ostensibly anyone can play. But for the Lobi tribe of northern Ghana, an ancestor of the xylophone called the gyil is a fixture at funeral rituals, a sacred instrument that consoles......

For Kone, Yellowstone National Park transformed from a vacation destination into a declaration of intent. Somewhere amid the volcanic pressure and glacial chill, wild elk and waterfalls, fuming geysers and herbal smoke, the veteran beat-scene producer’s second album started to cohere. “You turn the corner and it goes from lush......