Digable Planets, Rakim, Tha Dogg Pound lead first SF Hip-Hop Festival
The Bay Area's storied hip-hop legacy takes center stage next month with the debut of the SF Hip-Hop Festival 2025, a two-day celebration of music, technology and culture.
Scheduled to take place at the Midway on July 18-19, the festival opens Friday with 'Culture RenAIssance – A Hip-Hop & AI Symposium,' featuring legendary MC Rakim as keynote speaker.
The panel will explore the evolving relationship between hip-hop and artificial intelligence, touching on ethics, innovation and equity in music tech. Rakim will also present his new fintech and AI venture, Notes, designed to empower independent artists with financial and entrepreneurial tools.
Saturday's all-day showcase will bring together more than two dozen performers spanning eras and coasts.
Headliners include West Coast rap duo Tha Dogg Pound, marking the 30th anniversary of 'Dogg Food,' and Digable Planets, currently touring in celebration of 1994's 'Blowout Comb.'
Bay Area legends Souls of Mischief, Mix Master Mike with Invisibl Skratch Piklz, RBL Posse, San Quinn and Los Rakas will join a stacked lineup reflecting the scene's depth and diversity.
'SF Hip-Hop was founded to preserve and celebrate the rich legacy of Hip-Hop culture in our city while creating new pathways for the next generation,' said co-founder Kamel Jacot-Bell in a statement. 'This moment represents the power of our community coming together to claim space, tell our stories, and shape the future we want to see.'
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Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
The perfect summer corn fritter to welcome you back to downtown L.A. restaurants
Returning to downtown L.A. restaurants after the curfew. The spirituality of red Fanta. 'The most exciting place to eat in the South Bay in recent memory.' And a Crunchwrap Supreme plot twist. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. I was happily eating a light lunch of poached chicken with an array of radishes, tarragon mayonnaise and buttered milk bread toast dusted with sea salt when our friendly and attentive waiter, just four days on the job, walked up holding a plate of sunshine: three beautifully fried corn fritters with flash-fried basil, a wedge of lime and a mound of salt for dipping. There was a dish of chile sauce too, but the corn's sweetness, salt and herbs were all I needed on the day before the official start of summer. I was at chef Giles Clark's Cafe 2001 with the editor of L.A. Times Food, Daniel Hernandez, and every table in the place was filled. The cafe's big brother restaurant, Yess, from chef Junya Yamasaki, was boarded up at the front entrance facing 7th Street — the dinner-only spot closed during the recent downtown L.A. curfew — but we saw activity in the kitchen when we peeked through the glass blocks on the side of the restaurant and were hopeful that Yess would reopen that night. As columnist Jenn Harris wrote this week, the seven-night curfew left downtown L.A. streets empty: 'All along 2nd Street, the windows and doors were hidden behind plywood. ... The frequently bustling Japanese Village Plaza, where shoppers dine at a revolving sushi bar and stop for cheese-filled corn dogs, was desolate.' Now there are tentative signs of recovery. 'Hours after the curfew was lifted Tuesday, downtown started to show signs of coming to life again,' Harris wrote. 'Just before 7 p.m., a line began to form at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo ... known as much for the perpetual wait as it is for its steaming bowls of tonkotsu ramen. It was a hopeful sight.' Yet, as Harris also reported, Kato, the three-time No. 1 restaurant on the L.A. Times 101 list, whose chef, Jon Yao, was named the best chef in California at this week's James Beard Awards, 'was still looking at a 70% drop in reservations for the upcoming week' after the curfew's end. 'The direct impact of the media's portrayal of DTLA being unsafe, which it is not, has impacted Kato,' Ryan Bailey, a partner in the restaurant told Harris. Certainly downtown is frequently portrayed, 'as a sometimes dodgy place to live and work.' But 'despite myriad challenges,' reported real estate specialist Roger Vincent this week, 'downtown L.A. is staging a comeback. ... Occupancy in downtown apartments has remained about 90% for more than a year ... slightly higher than the level before the pandemic. ... In fact, the downtown population has more than tripled since 2000, reflecting a dynamic shift in the city center's character toward a 24-hour lifestyle.' 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[sometimes] kabocha pumpkin and puntarelle with blood orange and fermented chiles [or] a verdant pea and potato salad with lemon-y pea tendrils.' But my current favorite Clark dish? Those light and crisp corn fritters. They were the perfect welcome back downtown gift after a tense week of closed restaurants. 'I've ... had customers come in and tell me, 'The American dream doesn't exist anymore.'' That's Evelin Gomez, a juice bar worker at the Carson location of Vallarta Supermarket, speaking with reporter Lauren Ng. Ng checked social media accounts and conducted interviews with people in grocery stores and restaurants founded by immigrants and the children of immigrants about what they are witnessing with the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions in Southern California. The independent-minded Casa Vega owner Christy Vega, who supported Rick Caruso over Karen Bass for mayor in the most recent election, 'has been an outspoken critic of ICE,' Ng wrote. 'I protested in honor of my Mexican immigrant father, Rafael Evaristo Vega, and the very people Casa Vega was built on since 1956,' Vega wrote on Instagram of her attendance at a 'No Kings' protest. 'I will always remember my roots and ALWAYS fight for the voiceless immigrant community.' Some restaurateurs, as Stephanie Breijo reported, have been coordinating grocery handouts and deliveries for those fearing being swept up in ICE raids. 'We understand the feelings that are happening in our community right now, even if we are legal,' said Xochitl Flores-Marcial, a partner in Boyle Heights' X'tiosu with its chef-founders, Felipe and Ignacio Santiago. 'Even if we have documents, that doesn't exempt us from the danger that so many people are facing right now and in our culture.' Meanwhile, assistant food editor Danielle Dorsey, put together a guide to 15 different food fundraisers and events to support those affected by ICE actions. Many are happening this weekend. The young and ambitious staff at Vin Folk — with two alums of Aitor Zabala's Somni leading the team of chef-servers — charmed columnist Jenn Harris during her visits to the Hermosa Beach restaurant created by chefs Kevin de los Santos and Katya Shastova. 'The dining room crackles with the hopeful, earnest energy of a start-up company, ripe with possibility,' she writes in her restaurant review published this week. 'And with food that has all the technique and precision of a tasting menu restaurant with less of the fuss, it is without a doubt the most exciting place to eat in the South Bay in recent memory.' 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In her latest Grocery Goblin dispatch, correspondent Vanessa Anderson examines why strawberry red Fanta — 'known as Fanta nam daeng, or 'Fanta red water'' — is seen in so many Thai shrines or spirit houses, many of which are set up at local grocery stores and restaurants. 'Much like those on this earthly plane, the way to a spirit's heart is through his or her stomach,' Anderson reports. 'In the past when we would do offerings to ghosts, it would be an offering of blood,' Pip Paganelli at Thai dessert shop Banh Kanom Thai, tells Anderson, who concludes that 'the bubbly strawberry nectar has since replaced animal sacrifice.' Paganelli, Anderson adds, also posits that red Fanta's 'sickly sweetness ... is beloved by ghosts because of just that. Most spirits have a sweet tooth.' The anniversary none of our social media feeds or TV news anchors will let us forget this week is the release 50 years ago of Steven Spielberg's 'eating machine' blockbuster 'Jaws.' But columnist Gustavo Arellano has another anniversary on this mind this week — the debut 20 years ago of Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme. 'The item has become essential for American consumers who like their Mexican food cheap and gimmicky,' he wrote this week, 'which is to say, basically everyone (birria ramen, anybody?)' The plot twist is that Arellano, author of 'Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,' had never actually eaten a Crunchwrap Supreme until this month. And when he finally did try it? Let's just say it lacked the crunch he was looking for. I'll let you read his column to find out why he prefers the bean-and-cheese burritos and Del Taco. Bonus: Arellano references Jenn Harris' 2015 story and recipe for a homemade Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme, to be enjoyed in the comfort of your home, without the 'bad playlists, scratchy paper napkins and fluorescent lighting' of a fast food restaurant. I think hers would have the crunch Arellano seeks.
San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Digable Planets, Rakim, Tha Dogg Pound lead first SF Hip-Hop Festival
The Bay Area's storied hip-hop legacy takes center stage next month with the debut of the SF Hip-Hop Festival 2025, a two-day celebration of music, technology and culture. Scheduled to take place at the Midway on July 18-19, the festival opens Friday with 'Culture RenAIssance – A Hip-Hop & AI Symposium,' featuring legendary MC Rakim as keynote speaker. The panel will explore the evolving relationship between hip-hop and artificial intelligence, touching on ethics, innovation and equity in music tech. Rakim will also present his new fintech and AI venture, Notes, designed to empower independent artists with financial and entrepreneurial tools. Saturday's all-day showcase will bring together more than two dozen performers spanning eras and coasts. Headliners include West Coast rap duo Tha Dogg Pound, marking the 30th anniversary of 'Dogg Food,' and Digable Planets, currently touring in celebration of 1994's 'Blowout Comb.' Bay Area legends Souls of Mischief, Mix Master Mike with Invisibl Skratch Piklz, RBL Posse, San Quinn and Los Rakas will join a stacked lineup reflecting the scene's depth and diversity. 'SF Hip-Hop was founded to preserve and celebrate the rich legacy of Hip-Hop culture in our city while creating new pathways for the next generation,' said co-founder Kamel Jacot-Bell in a statement. 'This moment represents the power of our community coming together to claim space, tell our stories, and shape the future we want to see.'
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Yahoo
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