Max Bell

Stones Throw Records Documentary Premiere Party Exchange LA 6/20/2013 Better than: the NBA finals. Founded in 1996 by DJ/producer Peanut Butter Wolf (Chris Manak) three years after the death of his best friend Charizma, Stones Throw Records has become one of the most successful and respected independent record labels in......

Azizi Gibson has always been on the move. The 22-year-old rapper/producer was born a military brat in Germany and lived in Zaire and Singapore before moving to Thailand. After fifth grade, his family moved to Annapolis, Maryland, where he stayed until dropping out of college in 2010. His solo crosscountry......

Lee "Q" O'Denat, is the founder of WorldStarHipHop.com, a site once known mainly for rap videos that is now synonymous with grainy urban street fights. (When one breaks out nowadays, you can bet smartphones will come out and someone will yell "World Star!") Q recently came to L.A. for a......

Paid Dues Independent Hip-Hop Festival San Manuel Amphitheater 3/30/13 Traffic was hellish. Parking was a mess, the outhouses were a disaster, the lines for food were ridiculously long, and one edifice labeled "will call" was not, in fact, will call. The dust was Coachella-like, and after the boiling sun set......

Lil B, the heavily tattooed Berkeley, California rapper with a gleaming grill and oversized earrings, entered the hip-hop game in 2006 as part of Bay Area rap group The Pack. Over the last three years he's garnered a tremendous Internet following, popularizing the words "swag" and "based," the latter an......

On a recent cool Friday afternoon, 25-year-old Mexican-American, openly gay rapper Rob B sits in one of the many cafés peppering Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. He's tan and toned, a 6-foot-1 part-time model who has done everything from runway to hand modeling, and today he's fitted in all-black......

L.A. hip-hop hasn't seen a year like this one since 1992, when the word G-Funk was (re)defined and art-rap was steadily making noise in and around Leimert Park. Twenty years ago saw, of course, the release of The Chronic, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, The Predator, Spice 1, and Way......