Kanye West

Top 10 Concert Films Every Music Writer Should Own

For music fans, there's nothing better than seeing your favorite band or checking out an up-and-coming act in person. While the records serve as a tangible finished product that fans can jam on until eternity, the live show experience explains more about a band than their recorded work. With concert ... More >>

OC Music Awards: Night 5 Becomes A Not-So-Subliminal Tribute to Sublime

Last night, the fifth installment of the Best Live Band showcase for the OC Music Awards led us down the long and beaten path of rim shots, scatting guitar and melodic bass lines as rastafied rock acts represented themselves to the fullest. Why they always group bands of the same genre together on t ... More >>

Paul McCartney To Play With Nirvana Tonight At The 12-12-12 Concert? Unfortunately, Yes

For those of you who may or may not know, tonight in New York City is the granddaddy of all Sandy concerts. Taking place at Madison Square Garden, tonight's show will feature some of the biggest names in music history including (drumroll please) Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Bon Jovi, Eri ... More >>

Top 10 Black Artists Who Should Go Country

[Editor's note: Country Time is a new biweekly column for our sister music blog in Seattle, celebrating that city's favorite musical genre: mainstream country.]  By: Mike SeelySee Also:*Kanye West and 50 Cent's 9/11/07 Album Showdown Revisited*Five Artists (Besides Lil Wayne) Who Think New York ... More >>

Snoop Dogg Finally Smokes Too Much Weed and Creates a Reggae Album as Snoop Lion

This week, we've been convinced that Snoop Dogg has finally, once and for all,  smoked too much weed. The iconic, Long Beach-born rapper is currently working on a reggae album titled Reincarnated with EDM wiz Diplo as the executive producer. Under his new found moniker Snoop Lion, a music ... More >>

Yeezy Engineer Confirms the Making of 'Watch the Throne 2'

It looks like rap's favorite tag-team Kanye West and Jay-z are about to HAM on us again. Thanks to some flippant confirmation (which we're more than happy to lick up) from Yeezy's long-time producer Mike Dean, the Internet buzz surrounding a sequel of the duo's Watch the Throne album is making us al ... More >>

Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Tupac's Hologram at Coachella, April 15, 2012

See also:*Tupac's Hologram: How It Was Done*Top Ten Awkward Coachella Dance Move GIFs*Coachella: Five Signs You're An Aging Hipster*Radiohead at Coachella: No Alarms and No SurprisesDr Dre and Snoop DoggCoachellaApril 15, 2012Headlining on Coachella's Sunday night is a tough slot to fill -- by that ... More >>

Tyga at The Observatory, March 29, 2012

​TygaThe ObservatoryMarch 28, 2012 Warning: This review contains explicit language, and your children should not read this--too bad you let them attend this concert.If you were at the Observatory to see Tyga perform at his sold-out show, you heard a lot--and I mean a lot--of  "Rack City," ... More >>

"Nigga in Paris": Jay-Z and Kanye Set a New Record, Which We Pretty Much Predicted

Sayre Berman​When we heard Jay-Z and Kanye West were playing the song "Niggas in Paris" multiple times during their Watch The Throne tour, we scratched out some highly scientific tabulations and calculated they would perform it 13 times in L.A. Here's how it all began. On the tour's first ni ... More >>

Ten Musician Stamps We'd Like To See

​ The US Postal Service, desperate to stop 15 years of bleeding caused by email and private competitors, announced that it will soon feature living people on stamps (the post office has long had a policy of placing only the dead on postage). Of interest to this column, the USPS will consider fe ... More >>

Foo Fighters Performing at BlizzCon

[Mental Notes] Landmark Long Beach record store to close

Foo Fighters to Headline BlizzCon 2011

​So you thought Kanye West performing at the Call of Duty XP was a little off? Well, BlizzCon just pulled out their piece de resistance by announcing the Foo Fighters will be headlining the closing event of the two-day convention.Blizzcon, held Oct. 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center, is a ... More >>

Mixtape Review: 'Under the Influence' by Domo Genesis

Domo GenesisUnder the InfluenceSelf-releasedDomo Genesis is the mellow, pot-smoking member of the rap collective Odd Future who for the most part avoids the lewd extremes of his friends Tyler the Creator and Earl the Sweatshirt. He's also not quite as lyrically talented, but Domo is no slouch. His s ... More >>

Kanye West and Jay-Z Confirm New North American Dates for Watch the Throne Tour

​As we reported earlier, Jay-Z and Kanye West have new dates for the Watch The Throne Tour due to the "overwhelming response to presale tickets." The North American tour will now begin on Saturday, Oct. 29 in Atlanta, Georgia at the Philips Arena. All fans who purchase their tickets online will r ... More >>

Top Five Asian-American Rappers

Last month, OC Weekly's Justin Shady created a list of the Top Five Worst Black Rappers and Top Five Worst White Rappers. The following is a list of five Asian-American rappers or rap groups who have found moderate to great success in crossing the color line of hip-hop. Like the two previous lists, ... More >>

Rihanna

Honda Center

Coachella's Six-Day Sellout: Blame the Mexis?

Christopher Victorio/OC WeeklyCoachella 2010​After the three-day Coachella music festival finally revealed its official lineup, tickets were snatched up in a record six days! Rolling Stone looked to the headiners--Kanye West, Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon--for possible explanation, noting the est ... More >>

Before It Gets Old: Josh Groban Sings Kanye West's Tweets on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

​In a move that raises him 50 gazillion cool points, Josh Groban appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live Monday night to promote his latest album, The Best Tweets of Kanye West. In the must-see spoof, Groban crooned, in beautiful operatic form, the gems of the rapper's Twitter stream, including "Do you know ... More >>

3hree Things: My 9 Favorite Albums Of 2010, Vol. 3 of 3

Watch out for 3hree Things every Tuesday, in which Riley Breckenridge, the drummer of Orange County's favorite alt-rock band, Thrice, gives his take on life in Southern California as an OC native.​I've been writing and publishing "Best/Favorite Of..." lists for music sites and/or blogs for several ... More >>

The Flaming Lips to Release New Songs in January

Myspace.com​Maybe it's a rip-off of Kanye's brilliant idea, but Oklahoma City psych-rockers the Flaming Lips are releasing new songs each month with longtime producer Dave Fridmann, and you can hear the first one in January. Frontman Wayne Coyne announced to Rolling Stone that they ... More >>

All Is Quiet on U2's Planned Dates

[Mental Notes] Also, more concert cancellations, Rage against Arizona, and Minus the Bear show review

Six Protest Songs For Zack de la Rocha's Boycott On Arizona

Lilledeshan Bose​On Tuesday, Zack de la Rocha gathered up a few of his friends to protest the Arizona state law (SB 1070) that legalizes and sanctions racial profiling on the site Soundstrike.net. Artists who joined forces to boycott Arizona (by "not allow(ing) our collective economic power to b ... More >>

[CD Review] Jay-Z, 'The Blueprint 3' (Roc Nation)

Incoming: Jay-Z at Honda Center in Anaheim

Take that, non-smoking laws!Jay-Z has recently declared Auto-Tune dead via his (kind of awesome) new single "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune);" possibly a weird sentiment given his close association to noted Auto-Tune proponent Kanye West, but hey, it's Hova, man. You can't tell that guy what to do. He d ... More >>

[Summer Guide] Notable Music Releases for Those Who Still Buy Albums

The Prodigy Are Still Changing Their Pitches Up, Probably Not Smacking Bitches Up

Live from Coachella: The Body Says No (plus, Okkervil River, Sebastien Tellier, Lupe Fiasco!)

Hey, did you know it's hot here today? 98 degrees at last word. But it "feels" like, I dunno, a billion? Yep. Pretty awesome. Trying to summon my (in?)famous reserves of ENDLESS ENERGY, but not necessarily succeeding. The Cure are probably going to play like three hours today. That's pretty cool. Is ... More >>

[Coachella 2009] Everything New Is Old Again--and Vice Versa

[CD Review] N.A.S.A., 'The Spirit of Apollo' (Anti-)

Rhythm and Blue Balls: A Case Against Current R&B, A.K.A. 'Rap and Bullshit'

L.A. Weekly's Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dr ... More >>

[Aural Reports] Long Beach's Erick Coomes Lives High on the Low End

[CD Review] Q-Tip, 'The Renaissance' (Universal Motown)

Because You're Ugly: Lolita Sunglasses

The first time I spotted heart-shaped sunglasses outside of Lolita was during Moschino's SS 2006 runway show. And for some inexplicable reason, I loved them, as silly as they seemed. The collection consisted of flirty dresses, full skirts, throwback 1950s swimsuits and, yes, heart-shaped sunglasses. ... More >>

Coachella's Robot Rock: Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin and Justice's Automation for (Moving) the People

Afrika Bambaataa Raises Consciousness—and Roofs

The Grammys: Drunk on Winehouse

Every year the Grammy Awards ceremony proves—among other things—how far out of step my tastes are with mainstream music, a state of affairs with which I came to terms, oh, in the early '80s. It also reveals the dearth of imagination/adventurousness of the nominating committee. Most of the music ... More >>

Looking for a Place to Be

Lupe Fiasco

Old Dog, New Tricks

A rap veteran at 20, Bow Wow dispenses advice to the next generation

Cool Hand Lupe

Hip-hop's lovable eccentric never ceases to amuse

The Precarious State of Album Art

With desire for the actual physical object of music recordings waning among the general public, the fate of album art hangs precariously in the balance. This piece (written by Bryan Borzykowski) captures the prevailing attitude among young music fans and major-label execs, who seem to be all whatevs ... More >>

But What About the Hip-hop, Tom?

Saul Williams

One Year Later

Usually when a regular columnist for one of the major news magazines begins to chew through the restraints of received ideas and government press releases, it is, to borrow a phrase from Samuel Johnson, "like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it don ... More >>

Hits!

National Compact Discs

Hits!

Compact Disc Warehouse

Get Out!

The Most Wonderful

Noise Noise Noise

Virgin Megastore

Swamp and Overflow

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