Sam Sweet
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Articles by Sam Sweet
The 100 Best LA Rap Songs
Key Takeaways These are the 100 best LA rap songs of all time, tracing the city’s sound from early electro and roller-rink anthems to contemporary street rap and chart hits. It centers icons like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, DJ Quik, Cypress Hill, and Kendrick Lamar while also highlighting cult heroes, Chicano rap, and underground innovators. The list is a four-decade tour of LA’s rap ecosystem—from swap meets and lowrider culture to gangsta rap and the post-Jheri-curl era.
Finding the Sublime in Storage
How the most unwieldy object in Raymond Pettibon’s archive illuminates the artist’s career-long plunge into uncharted waters Surfboard from Raymond Pettibon Archive, Raymond Pettibon. Gift of Raymond Pettibon. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2024.M.70). © Raymond Pettibon Finding the Sublime in Storage Body Content When archivists step into one of the subterranean storage vaults at the Getty Research Institute, the first thing they see is a surfboard.
Inside The Frame | Getty News
By pointing the camera at his friends, Jerry McMillan produced a portrait of the Los Angeles art scene as essential as any painting Joe Goode, Jerry McMillan, and Ed Ruscha with Ed’s ’39 Chevy, 1970, Jerry McMillan. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2015.M.10) Body Content In Jerry McMillan’s photographs, you can feel the Los Angeles art scene of the ’60s and ’70s coalesce.
The Body on the Page
For iconic movement artist Simone Forti, the notebook was a private stage for a radical exploration of self that fueled a creative breakthrough Simone Forti performs Planet, 1976. © Barbara Moore/Licensed by VAGA, New York.
Second Chance Suite
The Regular In Gardena, there were no windows, no alcohol, and no sounds beyond the low murmurings of gaming, the clicks of chips on felt. An anonymous suburb seventeen miles due south of the Hollywood Sign, known, if at all, for its plastics factories, Gardena also happened to contain 210 poker tables spread across six clubs that stayed open 365 days a year, including Christmas. It wasn’t everyone’s idea of paradise, but there was nothing else like it on earth.
Chronicle of a Death Foreteller
From “7417 Hollywood Boulevard,” which was published in October 2021 in the fourth volume of his All Night Menu series, a history of Los Angeles in five installments. Each booklet tells the story of eight addresses in the city. Having been run out of London, Paris, and New York, the world-renowned palm reader Cheiro found a warm welcome in Los Angeles in 1927, at the age of sixty. His hair was gray, and a bout of double pneumonia had brought him close to death.
Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell
Fortunately, “I Got a Story to Tell” bears a life force that looms even larger than Wallace’s — that of his Jamaican-born “moms,” Voletta, who has so much star presence that even Angela Bassett couldn’t quite do justice to it when she played her in the 2009 movie. Read More
The 100 Best L.A. Rap Songs
This feature was originally published on July 1, 2015. What do Roger Troutman, Jerry Heller, and LAPD Chief Daryl Gates have in common?Absolutely nothing, except for the fact that without them there would be no such thing as L.A. rap.
The Crown Vic Jumps Its Last Curb
By Sam Sweet September 3, 2013 The Times recently reported that police departments are assigning officers the last of the Ford Crown Victorias, thereby signalling the end for one of law enforcement’s most iconic vehicles. Produced by Ford from 1979 to 2011, the heavyset sedan is beloved by police for its durability and muscle, and also, above all, for its hulking yet stealthy silhouette. Anyone who has been pulled over in the past twenty years is self-trained in spotting an unmarked Crown Vic.
Artist uses News Journal photos, police pamphlet to look at Wilmington occupation
Throughout the summer, Wilmington will continue to reflect on the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination 50 years ago, and the powerful, community-changing public response that followed. The Delaware Art Museum has commissioned an original work that employs archival documents from the Delaware Historical Society and photographs of the 1868 National Guard occupation of Wilmington taken by News Journal staff to mark the occasion.
Arts groups invest in people to serve as community hubs
Do you know Brother Iz Balleto? You’ve probably seen him around Wilmington’s music scene, wearing fatigues and a bandana. For over a decade, he’s been instrumental in organizing music festivals, breakdancing competitions and public graffiti art for organizations like 302 Guns Down and Guerilla Republik. You can find him on stage at rallies and protests, or in parks speaking to youth, always spreading a message of peace, love and respect.
Keepers
An excerpt from “The Whole Damn Story,” an eighty-page book included with the Heartworn Highways 40th Anniversary Edition Box Set, available on Record Store Day, April 16, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author and Light in the Attic Records. Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt met during what Clark later called “the great folk scare.” Houston in the early 1960s had a folk community that paralleled those in Cambridge, Minneapolis, or Los Angeles—only smaller and with better bluesmen.
Men's lacrosse nearly pulls off upset at No. 13 Nazareth
Nazareth College took the lead with five straight goals in the third quarter and the nationally ranked No. 13 Golden Flyers held on for a 14-12 non-conference win against the Hamilton College Continentals in Rochester, N.Y., on Wednesday afternoon. Hamilton (3-3 overall) led 8-7 at the half and 9-8 early in the third quarter when Nazareth went on its five-goal run. The Golden Flyers enjoyed a 13-9 cushion after three quarters but the Continentals pulled to within a goal midway through the fourth.
Men's lacrosse upsets No. 19 Keene State in Florida
Hamilton College's Clay McCollum '19 posted five points and led the Continentals to a 12-11 non-conference win against the nationally ranked No. 19 Keene State College Owls at Northeast Regional Park in Davenport, Fla., on Tuesday. Hamilton (3-1 overall) scored the first two goals and led the entire game. The Continentals are one of 10 teams on the "Also Receiving Votes" portion of this week's Division III Top 20 coaches poll.
The Long, Tangled History of Alfred E. Neuman
The long and tangled history of Alfred E. Neuman. Postcard that later inspired Norman Mingo’s, Alfred E. Neuman. In a 1975 interview with the New York Times, MAD Magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman recalled an illustration of a grinning boy he’d spotted on a postcard in the early fifties: a “bumpkin portrait,” “part leering wiseacre, part happy-go-lucky kid.” It was captioned “What, Me Worry?” That bumpkin became Alfred E. Neuman, MAD’s mascot, who turns sixty this year—kind of.
A Vanished New Orleans Captured on “Straight from the Projects”
The bar at 3901 Thalia Street first appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1933.
The Roller Rink Origins of N.W.A. (Published 2015)
Essay The exterior of Skateland U.S.A.Credit...Craig Schweisinger Aug. 13, 2015 Craig Schweisinger opened the doors to Skateland U.S.A. on Saturday, Nov. 16, 1984. High schoolers mingled with gangbangers and roller skaters who took their choreography seriously. A sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS greeted attendees at the door. Everyone was required to pass through an airport-style metal detector Schweisinger installed as part of his permit arrangement with the Compton Police Department.
World War II’s Sensational Venereal Disease Posters
By Sam Sweet August 15, 2014 World War II’s sensational venereal disease posters. Pause Play Play Prev | Next J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” woman first appeared in 1943, when he drew her in a poster for Westinghouse Electric’s internal War Production Coordinating Committee.
A Dangerous and Evil Piano Piece
On September 9, 1963, a small classroom-size crowd of abstract artists, Off Broadway actors, and miscellaneous beatniks gathered at the Pocket Theatre—a former vaudeville house on Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street—to witness the début of a seventy-year-old piece of mysterious piano music.
The 25 Best Dr. Dre Beats
What exactly was the moment when Dr. Dre went from being a rap producer to the all-seeing oracle of the hip-hop industry? The crucial transformation in a career of crucial transformations can be traced to Dre’s initial partnership with Eminem. In 1997, Dre was struggling to make Aftermath relevant following the massive cultural significance of his Death Row recordings. Now the papers were reporting that he was determined to break a blonde emcee from Detroit.
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