PHILLIP MLYNAR

See also: *Our review of Portishead at Shrine Auditorium, October 18, 2011 *Portishead's Geoff Barrow: "Dance music is full of assholes. Self-promoting assholes." Back in the mid-'90s, the British trio Portishead emerged as bastions of the trip-hop movement. Trip-hop was a term invoked more often by the media than the......

A correction was issued for this post. Please see the bottom of the piece. Most aspiring music artists who hope to get noticed nowadays have similar, tired routines. They post their songs for free, spam the usual social networks, and then sit back and wait for Jimmy Iovine to call......

Yesterday LA Weekly brought you the shocking revelations of former LAPD detective Greg Kading, whose new book Murder Rap fingers Suge Knight for ordering Biggie's killing and Diddy for ordering Tupac's. At the center of the story is Duane Keith "Keffe D" Davis, who told Kading that Diddy offered him......

Earlier this week we blew your minds with our post about rappers cats, which included the bombshell that the so-called Snoop "Dogg" actually owns a pair of kittens. But of even greater controversy was our reporting on hip-hop superproducer Just Blaze's cat, called Rags Lauren. After our story went live,......

9:23 PDT Update: Just Blaze rescued his cat, near death, in a thunderstorm! But, the cat doesn't live with him, but rather at his studio! We've got a picture as proof at the bottom of this post. 9:07 PDT Update: Just Blaze's cat's Twitter account is a fraud. "I didn't......

Along with Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa is a card-carrying member of hip-hop's holy trinity. Back in the genre's baby years, Bam helped bring competing Bronx streets gangs together in the name of musical unity, and cut the seminal electro track, 1982's "Planet Rock," which helped inspire the......

You've got to hand it to Lea Michelle, Matthew Morrison, and the rest of the cast of the TV show Glee -- they certainly have a special talent for taking a once awesome pop song and turning it into an insufferable case of over-singing and unnecessary theatricality. The third season......

Editor's Note: Today, September 13, 2011, marks the 15th anniversary of Tupac Shakur's death. To commemorate, West Coast Sound is featuring Tupac stories all week. See also: *Bruce Hornsby on Tupac: "The original 'Changes' was a lot dirtier, had a lot of the n-word." *African Rebel Soldiers and Their Eerie......

Long before there was rap vixen Nicki Minaj, and almost a decade prior to Lil Kim and Foxy Brown introducing the world to their sexed-up shopping spree lyrics, two female rappers from the heart of Queens named Salt-N-Pepa helped craft the idea of sassy female rap. And while the word......

The Ohio Players briefly touched the heights of the pop charts in the '70s, but the funky grooves of the group (who are, indeed, from Ohio) went on to become fertile sample sources for hip-hop producers. Los Angeles beat-smiths, in particular, have frequently been seduced by the tight workouts on......