Timothy Norris

See also:
*The Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride, 20 Years Later: 
An Appreciation
*Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List

The Pharcyde
The Roxy
5/23/12

Better than ... listening to the album.

The city's been a little tense lately, honking on the freeway, power drinking, and slinking off to Best Buy to replace smashed television sets. But now that we're out of the basketball playoffs, the Pharcyde did their best to restore our "don't sweat it" mentality. The Roxy last night was packed and steamy, perfect conditions for the group to perform one of the greatest albums ever cooked from the city's time-tested recipe of women, weed and weather, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde.

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Suzu Fresco

Slimkid3 and Fatlip

See also:
*Our review of the Pharcyde at the Roxy, 5/23/12
*J-Swift Made Big Hits 
With the Pharcyde 
Before Tragedy and Drugs 
Nearly Took Him Down
*Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List

To fully appreciate the impact of The Pharcyde's "Ya Mama," you had to be in a junior high lunchroom in the spring of 1993. It was mama manna from the heavens nourishing the impressionable youth with disses for days. Two decades later, the lines still detonate. Things ya mama had: a peg leg with a kickstand, an afro with a chin strip, Play-Doh teeth, the wings and teeth of an African bat, hair on her tongue, and a 99-cent sign on her back (while walking down Sunset).

Currently touched up for 20th-anniversary reissue treatment, the album from which the song sprang, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, was a rap gateway drug, a powerfully psychedelic expansion. After all, earlier this year, the group's producer J-Swift told me that the name came after a mushroom binge while watching Oliver Stone's The Doors.

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Co$$ and effect.

Underground Los Angeles rapper Co$$ has built up quite a bit of momentum, collaborating with folks like Blu and Freddie Gibbs. Ahead of his second full-length album with producer Numonics, Genesis, out on May 22nd, we spoke with Co$$ about the origins of his name, his weed habit and other subjects.

What's the story behind your name?
Well, my real alias is Cashus King, but "Co$$" came from "Holocaust," which is the name I used when I used to do "Textcee battles." Those "battles" were rap battles on messageboards online where people would post lyrics against each other. It's where I feel I honed my skills and found an identity as a lyricist. In high school I began recording as "Holocaust," but friends were quick to tell me no Jews or Armenians would buy my records. I never picked the name to disrespect them, it was in reference to how I would "burn MCs to the ground." So I dropped the "Holo" and kept "Co$$," which Blu gave me. I was going to just be Cashus King from the beginning, but Ca$his had just signed to Shady and I didn't want to seem like I was biting. Plus, I like all the ways to flip what "Co$$" means.

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3MG
LACMA
5-17-11

See also: Murs on How His Family's Dry-Cleaning Business Survived the Riots

Better Than... the DMC show LACMA put on a few months back in the Bing Theater. I love DMC, but that shindig was awkward.

Composed of Murs, Eligh and Scarub, 3MG reunited for a performance last night at LACMA, of all places. The first in a series of hip-hop concerts co-curated by Murs for the museum, the sold-out show was framed in front of Chris Burden's Urban Lights sculpture, and was a pretty damn good way to spend a Thursday night. No, not the most raucous show to be found, but hey, it was hip-hop at LACMA.

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Kevin Scanlon

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

"Ni**as in Paris," last year's most popular song, exploded in roughly the same amount of time that its producer spent creating it.

"It took me probably 15 minutes to make that beat, and it changed my life," Hit Boy says of the ubiquitous, deliciously bass-heavy beat. In December, he watched Kanye West and Jay-Z perform the song 10 times in a row at the duo's Watch the Throne concert stop in L.A., sending the sold-out crowd into a frenzy. For a 24-year-old producer -- to use the song's catchphrase -- that shit was cray.

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See also:
*Viva Los Dodgers 2012 Lineup Announced: Ximena Sariñana, Ana Tijoux, More
*Reviewed: Ana Tijoux performs at MacArthur Park, 8/11/11

Having grown up in political exile in France during Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's reign, it seems natural that rapper Ana Tijoux -- now 34 -- would cover a lot of political ground in her lyrics.

People ask her about her music's social and political commentary a lot, she says. "I don't think I'm involved in politics; I feel that politics is involved in all of us. It's part of life."

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Ivan Fernandez

Sick Jacken and Cynic at Graff Lab in Pico-Union

See also: Psycho Realm's 
Message Resonates As Strongly As Ever

Sick Jacken and Cynic are lauded Pico-Union rappers; the former is a member of underground hip-hop sensation Psycho Realm, while the latter is one half of Street Platoon and a frequent Realm collaborator.

Psycho Realm became a phenomenon in the '90s, but the group was put on hold in 1999 one month before the release of their second album after Jacken's brother Big Duke -- the other half of Realm -- was shot in the neck. The incident left him a paraplegic and Jacken left the music world for a few years. He returned to the stage with some help from Cynic and his partner Crow; Jacken and Cynic have a new record out today titled The Terror Tapes Vol. 2. We spoke with them recently at the Graff Lab in Pico-Union, near where they grew up.

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See also: Top Ten Rap Albums For People Who Don't Know Shit About Hip-Hop

Rap battles have always been important in hip-hop. Many aspects of the genre's evolution and spirit of competition have sprung from the art form, and each generation has had its landmark battles. The 1981 Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee battle at New York's Harlem World took MCing to the next level, while the series of clashes between Supernatural and Craig G in the '90s redefined battle rap rivalries. Some Scribble Jam events of the early 2000s, meanwhile, helped elevate the statuses of folks like Sage Francis and Eyedea.

There could be more history made on June 9th at Exchange LA, as modern battling's franchise player Dizaster takes on the legendary Canibus, who is making his organized battling debut. The event is put on by King of the Dot: Fresh Coast, the west coast branch of Toronto's world renowned King of the Dot battle league.

Here's why you should care:

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You know, the "Hey Ya" guys

See also: Top Ten Jazz Albums for People Who Don't Know Shit About Jazz

Hip-hop is nearly 40, but many still find this slightly-disorienting world of beats, rhymes and oversize personalities a bit daunting.

So consider this our hip-hop Cliff's notes; here are the albums you should know about if you don't want to look silly at cocktail parties. We're not saying these are necessarily the best rap albums of all time, but rather the most accessible. They're also great for dipping your toes into what has become, perhaps, the most influential genre of pop music of our time.

Let's do this!

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Wikipedia Commons

See also:
*Our Adam Yauch Obituary
*Adam Yauch, RIP: A Life in Photos

Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys, died last week. His group was a big deal in hip-hop, not just because they were the first white act to break through, but because they helped establish both the sample-based production and rambunctious lyricism that made rap an international juggernaut.

Within the act, Yauch stood out as well, as noted by our writer Chaz Kangas, for bringing them early credibility. "[H]is grizzled voice -- between Ad-Rock and Mike D.'s higher-pitched wails -- made for their most conventional element, allowing them to connect to a more traditional hip-hop audience."

But from the string of memorials that have come out since his death, one could get the impression that a single stanza came to define his career, from the group's 1994 track "Sure Shot":

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