Ice Cube
“It Was a Good Day” (1993)
Key lyric:
“I picked up the cash flow / Then we played bones, and I’m yelling: ‘Domino!’ /Plus, nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A. /Today was a good day”
Locating it: Life is hard in Los Angeles, but some days just seem to shine, a truth that Ice Cube unspools across the length of the track. Released after the 1992 riots, lyrically “ Good Day” moves across time and space, and a quarter-century later, it marks a kind of beginning to a new Los Angeles spin on the city.
Afghan Whigs
“Fountain and Fairfax” (1993)
Key lyric:
“Angel, forever / Don’t you promise me / What you cannot deliver now / Angel, together / I’ll be waiting for you / On Fountain and Fairfax”
Locating it: Lead singer and lyricist Greg Dulli is focused on a particular building, Crescent Heights Methodist Church, in the grunge-heavy song from the band’s breakout album “Gentlemen.” The church held AA meetings, which Dulli attended with a friend. “I heard some really poignant testimony there and also saw a couple people up there who looked like they were auditioning for an acting job,” he once said.
Liz Phair
“Dogs of L.A.” (1994)
Key lyric:
“The canyon air is like a breath of fresh L.A. / I was a Star Trek crew member, with my Beatle boots and my Super-8 / And I raced you to the top, the camera gets a stuttered shot / Of me approaching a painted shrine / I kissed the Buddha and made him cry / Georgie, I’m your friend / And the s—brown reservoir is a testament to the dogs of L.A. / They hold the place like the mafia, and say, ‘Run me around again’ ”
Locating it: Whether Phair is speaking of Benedict, Laurel or Topanga Canyon, she’s thinking about canines and reflecting on youth. The dirty reservoir of which she sings must be near whichever hiking site Phair describes. Stone Canyon, Silver Lake, Rowena or Upper Franklin?
Warren G feat.
Nate Dogg
“Regulate” (1994)
Key lyric:
“Just hit the east side of the LBC / On a mission trying to find Mr. Warren G / Seen a car full of girls, ain’t no need to tweak / All you skirts know what’s up with 213 / So I hook a left on 21 & Lewis / Some brothers shooting dice, so I said ‘Let’s do this!’ / I jumped out the ride and said ‘What’s up?’ / Some brothers pulled some gats, so I said, ‘I’m stuck!’ ”
Locating it: A true collaborative effort, Dogg and G deftly trade four-line verses on this classic G-funk jam set in East Long Beach near the intersection of 21st and Lewis. With the precision of playwrights, Warren G describes a “clear black night, clear white moon” as Nate Dogg conveys the event from his perspective. There’s a dice game, a robbery, a gun aimed at Warren G’s head and a last-minute rescue by his pal. With the incident resolved, the two friends — what else? — hook up with “a gang of hoes over there on the curb.”
Of the song’s location, Warren G told The Times in 1995, “I used to hang out at this spot, and my homeboys were telling me, ‘You gonna have to start making some money, because you just can’t be sitting here with us.”
Pharcyde
“She Said” (1995)
Key lyric:
“Looking right ’cause my s— is tight / Blazing blunts to city lights on Sunset & Crescent Heights / Bounce to the House of Blues then I slid in free / With tennis shoes, sweatshirt, jeans and no ID”
Locating it: Fatlip is speaking of an intersection at the heart of the Sunset Strip. In 1992, that intersection housed a Virgin Records Megastore. After blazing a joint outside the shop, he heads west down Sunset to the now-shuttered House of Blues. Known at the time for its controversial — some would say racist — dress code, the club considered Pharcyde to be so powerful that the bouncers let them slide.
“We laugh a lot. We find humor in things other people don’t. Everyday situations,” Fatlip told The Times in 1993. “People might look at things around here and say, like, ‘Damn!’ We say, ‘Ha ha ha.’ We just chill out.” Fatlip added: “This is the last interview I’m doing. I’ve said everything I want to say. I don’t need to talk to anybody anymore.” Indeed, Fatlip declined numerous attempts to be newly interviewed for this project.
Red Hot
Chili Peppers
“Deep Kick” (1995)
Key lyric:
“We went to Fairfax High School / Jumped off buildings into their pools / We’d sit down and grease at Canter’s / Run like hell they can’t catch us / Two boys in L.A. proper / Stealing anything that we could / Got to sneak into the Starwood / Got to peak into the deep good”
Locating it: In one quick-shot verse, the Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis describes his and bandmate Flea’s teenage years growing up in Hollywood, jumping from Fairfax High School to Canter’s Deli and the punk club the Starwood.
The platinum funk-rock band has long celebrated its local roots and is as lyrically connected to the city as the Doors or the Beach Boys.
“This is where we grew up, and we are affected by our surroundings,” Kiedis told a Times reporter in 1990, while they were riding through the Fairfax district in a limousine. “L.A., and Hollywood specifically, is a very huge element of what we are all about … This is an incredible place, and it shows in our music. It’s disgusting and it’s beautiful at the same time, which is basically what life is all about. We got a very concentrated dose of reality growing up in this town.”
Montell Jordan
“This Is How We Do It” (1995)
Key lyric:
“I’m kinda buzzed and it’s all because / (This is how we do it) / South Central does it like nobody does / (This is how we do it)”
Locating it: A song that celebrates cruising through Los Angeles in a big black pick-up truck, Jordan’s debut single takes place on a Friday night as he and his team drink from 40-ounce cans and make their way home from a party on the Westside. “Designated driver, take the keys to my truck,” Jordan commands, pointing out that the “honeys in the street say, ‘Monty, yo we made it!’ — it feels so good in my hood tonight.” The unsung hero of this new jack swing anthem? The designated driver. Were there such a thing as the official anthem of Los Angeles County, “This Is How We Do It” makes the final ballot, no question.
Rage Against
the Machine
“Down Rodeo” (1996)
Key lyric:
“Yeah, I’m rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun / These people ain’t seen a brown-skinned man / Since their grandparents bought one”
Locating it: “I know that some people look at us as just rabble-rousing or ranting or whining. But I think a lot of that reflects the cynicism that people have when it comes to dealing with political problems,” Rage Against the Machine’s Zach de la Rocha told The Times in 1996. “The hopelessness. I think you can see it at the polls.” The band was promoting “Evil Empire,” the album from which “On Rodeo” is taken. “No one thinks that they can make a difference. What we are trying to show is that people can make a difference.”
Where, exactly, de la Rocha is on Rodeo is anyone’s guess. The Gucci store? The Ivy? Nobu? Take your pick. What he skips over is that “rolling down Rodeo” means he’s stuck in an endless traffic jam caused by some selfish talent agent in a Ferrari trying to make a left onto Brighton Way during rush hour.
R.E.M.
“Electrolite” (1996)
Key lyric:
“If I ever want to fly / Mulholland Drive / I am alive / Hollywood is under me / I’m Martin Sheen / I’m Steve McQueen / I’m Jimmy Dean”
Locating it: Those who have taken Mulholland at night understand the sensation that singer Michael Stipe describes. Wending along the scenic stretch yields breathtaking views of the L.A. basin — and no small amount of envy at the wealth that the road represents.
“The character in that song is driving through the hills of Mulholland, looking at the beauty of Los Angeles at night,” R.E.M.’s Peter Buck told The Times in 1996. “Everyone really does feel like Steve McQueen or someone when they are on top of the hill. I don’t know what really happens to the guy at the end of the song ... when he comes down to reality.”
Sublime
“April 29, 1992 (Miami)” (1996)
Key lyric:
“First spot we hit it was my liquor store / I finally got all that alcohol I can’t afford / With red lights flashing, time to retire / And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire / Next stop we hit was the music shop / It only took one brick to make that window drop / Finally we got our own P.A. / Where do you think I got this guitar that you’re hearing today?”
Locating it: A tour diary of the L.A. riots, told from the perspective of some musically inclined looters. If the late singer Bradley Nowell is to be believed, there was one less liquor store in Long Beach after the 1992 riots, because he and his team turned it “into a structure fire.” In the song, a police radio locates the crime in progress — “10-4 — Alameda and Anaheim.”
Beck
“Debra” (1999)
Key lyric:
“I pick you up late at night after work / I said, ‘Lady, step inside my Hyundai / I’m gonna take you up to Glendale / Yeah, gonna take you for a real good meal’ ”
Locating it: Beck’s ironic ode to a woman and her sister tells the story of an affair sparked at JCPenney and (hopefully) consummated in a Hyundai. He rhymes “ripe for a pickin’ ” with “Zankou Chicken” and fantasizes about a date in Glendale. Quiz an outsider on Glendale, and they’ll likely tell you that it’s located a few hours outside of Los Angeles. It’s not. It’s right there by Griffith Park — and Beck treats the unassuming town with Malibu-style reverence.
Rilo Kiley
“Glendora” (1999)
Key lyric:
“It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m in Glendora / I’m the only living person in Glendora / Heading east on the freeway / Left my prom dress on the bus stop in Duarte / I switch the rules, you take advantage / You know I always like to play the victim”
Locating it: Glendora is not a suburb of Glendale. It’s east down the 134 between San Dimas and Azusa. The prom dress that Rilo Kiley’s singer and cofounder Jenny Lewis abandoned is a few miles west, in the foothills beneath Monrovia Canyon Park. What occurred that led the narrator from Glendora to a Duarte bus stop is not fully clear, but whatever occurred sounds harrowing. Another Rilo Kiley song about the region, “Let Me Back In,” is a more loving song to the city, but the Chandler-esque intrigue of “Glendora” delivers more darkness.
Tool
“L.A. Municipal Court” (2000)
Key lyric:
“If you need to make a traffic court appointment, please press 1 / Unless you have not filled out a DD form 3018, in which case / Please press 2 / To receive a blank DD form 3018, please come / Down to the Los Angeles Municipal Court building during normal / Business hours. If you have filled out DD form 3018, but have / Not reported to the City Attorney’s Office, please press 3”
Locating it: The sturdy granite building on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles might be unassuming from the street, but as suggested by the automated female voice on experimental metal band Tool’s pounding, grating song, a lot of fury and frustration occurs within its walls. Less a composition than a raging tantrum directed at The Man, the L.A. band moves through six minutes of organized noise as the same voicemail operator guides us through a series of directives sure to revive the PTSD of those who have endured L.A. traffic court.
Elani Mandell
“Silverlake Babies” (2001)
Key lyric:
“We’ll have Silverlake babies / Up from the reservoir / Hang by our fingers the fence that surrounds it / Under the night sky / The lavender bright sky / Lonely and emptied of stars / We’ll saddle around / To the clubs when we’re up for it / Saddle around to the bars / And huddle in close when we’re ready for bed / Lullabye Philip K Dick.”
Locating it: Singer-songwriter Mandell imagines a bucolic, maternal life inside one of the fancy homes surrounding the Silver Lake reservoir. Unlike the beatific orange crate art designs from a century prior celebrating Southern California living, though, Mandell’s lyrics don’t focus only on the landscape. Rather, she’s devoted to the proximity to clubs, its yin-yang nature and how, nestled among the hills, helicopters and high-beams still rule the skies, “buzzing the searchlight / Oh, miracle spotlight / Lonely and emptied of stars.”
The Distillers
“City of Angels” (2002)
Key lyric:
“Going down to the gravel, head to the barrel / Take this life and end this struggle / Los Angeles, come scam me please / Emptiness never sleeps at Clifton’s 6 a.m. / With your bag lady friend and your mind descending / Stripped of the right to be a human in control / It’s warmer in hell so down we go”
Locating it: The famed downtown eatery has been renovated and re-imagined since punk band the Distillers celebrated it. Back then, it was a landmark that still gave free food to those who couldn’t afford it. Like much of downtown, the space is way more upscale now.
Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
“Bang on” (2003)
Key lyric:
“I say F— them all when I bang them on some / From Inglewood to my city of Carson / Through every hood you should be banging more often / Is your life more then what it is costing?”
Locating it: Carson is nestled between Compton and Long Beach off the 110, yes, but if you’re a rap fan, Carson is Boo-Yaa all the way. The great Samoan American rap group was founded by the seven Devoux brothers in the late 1980s, and since then, they’ve become synonymous with their city.
Morrissey
“First of the Gang to Die” (2004)
Key lyric:
“You have never been in love / Until you have seen the stars reflect in the reservoirs / And you have never been in love / Until you have seen the dawn rise / Behind the home for the blind”
Locating it: Morrissey lived in Los Angeles for over a decade starting in the 1990s, and when he did, he lived in a grand manse just above the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills. You can find the location online, but it’s unclear which reservoir he’s recalling in this song about fate and the passage of time. When he lived here, Morrissey used to be a regular presence, especially around his old haunt, the Cat & Fiddle. That pub has moved to smaller digs, and the artist has returned to Europe to focus on ranting about immigration.
Weezer
“Beverly Hills” (2005)
Key lyric:
“Look at all those movie stars / They’re all so beautiful and clean / When the housemaids scrub the floors / They get the spaces in between / I wanna live a life like that / I wanna be just like a king / Take my picture by the pool / ’Cause I’m the next big thing”
Locating it: Weezer singer- songwriter Rivers Cuomo grew up in Santa Monica, so in a tribalistic sense, his take on Beverly Hills is comparable to a Crip writing about Blood territory. He’s not talking about a specific spot, nor is he revealing much new information. Instead, Cuomo and band’s chunka-chunka rock song compares his own lot in life — “My automobile is a piece of crap / My fashion sense is a little whack” — to the tonier residents of his neighbors to the east.
Beyoncé and Jay Z
“Hollywood” (2007)
Key lyric:
“Now you’ve become what you once despised / James Dean / John Belushi / Blow your whole life / Trying to live in the lights / Heroines following Marilyn / Hopping over the edge / Just like Janis Joplin / River Phoenix / Jimi Hendrix / Jimmy Morrison / All of them ended by / Hollywood”
Locating it: Whether the lives of Jim Morrison, James Dean and Jimi Hendrix were “ended by Hollywood” is debatable, to say the least. Morrison died in Paris; Hendrix, in London and Dean, in a desert northwest of Bakersfield. Jay and Bey’s Hollywood is the one of the imagination, where excess will kill you, and if it doesn’t, you’ll just hate yourself in the morning.
Neko Case
“In California” (2007)
Key lyric:
“Another suicide on the 405 / The Black Dahlia she smiles and smiles / It’s the same old town that bled her dry / One more starlet one more time / Bound to make it do or die / Talk a walk to Bonnie Brae / Try to wash these dreams away / They try to tell me L.A is beautiful when it rains”
Locating it: Case isn’t a native, but knows enough about Los Angeles to understand the suicidal feeling of driving the 405, to entangle into her lyrics a mention of the Black Dahlia murder and the perils of Hollywood. The great songwriter leaps to Bonnie Brae, which runs from Echo Park to South Los Angeles, where she wants to “try to wash these dreams away.”
Ozomatli
“City of Angels” (2007)
Key lyric:
“Grew up Miracle Mile / Fairfax to tar traps, Hamilton High alumni / What you know ham and cheese supreme / Walk Crescent Heights worldwide back to strangle us / Land of the saint and the land of the wicked”
Locating it: The Los Angeles band Ozomatli celebrates the Miracle Mile neighborhood along Wilshire in this urgent rally-cry. Rapped by Ozo’s Justin Porée, the track celebrates Hamilton High on South Robertson, the La Brea tar pits and the Koreatown-adjacent Pico West area. The band, in fact, served as cultural ambassadors in an official capacity for nearly a decade. The song’s a top hit at Dodger Stadium.
Miley Cyrus
“Party in the U.S.A.” (2008)
Key lyric:
“Get to the club in my taxi cab / Everybody’s looking at me now / Like, ‘Who’s that chick, that’s rocking kicks? / She gotta be from out of town’ / So hard with my girls not around me / It’s definitely not a Nashville party / ’Cause all I see are stilettos / I guess I never got the memo”
Locating it: Eleven years ago, the former Hannah Montana was coming into her own and visiting Los Angeles as a Tennessee tourist. The narrative of her breakout hit occurs across a single evening as our hero lands at LAX and heads straight for the Hollywood dance clubs. All the women are wearing stilettos. Cyrus is wearing sneakers. A decade-plus later, few could have known that Cyrus would still be a superstar — or that her dad would help propel country-rap to unimaginable heights.
Katy Perry
“California Gurls” (2010)
Key lyric:
“The girl’s a freak / She drive a Jeep and live on the beach / I’m OK, I won’t play / I love the Bay just like I love L.A. / Venice Beach and Palm Springs / Summertime is everything / Homeboys banging out / All that ass hanging out / Bikinis, zucchinis, martinis, no weenies / Just the king and a queenie”
Locating it: On “California Gurls,” Perry celebrates the better coast. She’s joined by Snoop Dogg, who leaps from the Bay Area to L.A. to Venice Beach and Palm Springs in a single couplet. Best is Snoop’s celebration of Southern California’s four essential elements — earth, air, water and fire be damned: “Bikinis, zucchinis, martinis, no weenies.”
Ximena Sarinana
“Echo Park” (2011)
Key lyric:
“I know I can be naive / Give myself entirely / For a man who looks like he / Knows his way ’round casually / I will start and look surprised / Till someone reminds me that / He lives in Echo Park”
Locating it: The bilingual Guadalajara, Mexico, singer sang of the titular downtown-adjacent community — or at least one guitar-playing gente who lived there — in 2011. That detail hardly narrows it. According to a recent (fictional) Echo Park Chamber of Commerce study, there are currently 18.7 male songwriters per square mile in the district.
Cali Swag District
“Teach Me How to Dougie” (2010)
Key Lyric:
“Put your arms out front, lean side-to-side / They gonna be on you when they see you hit that Dougie, right / Ain’t nobody f— with my bro from Morningside / He go by Bubba and he hit that dance like thunder.”
Locating it: The dance that swept the nation during the Obama years — who could forget the first lady’s version? — references a specific Inglewood neighborhood. As its residents are keenly aware, Morningside Park is in the flight path of LAX, five miles west. That’s hardly a reason to dance, but if Cali Swag District’s Smoov is to be believed, his Morningside brother’s thunderous take on the Dougie likely drowns out the jets overhead.
One of the first black middle-class neighborhoods in L.A., Morningside Park abuts the Forum and the future Rams football stadium. If neighborhood leaders were smart, they’d play up its place in L.A. music history with a statue honoring Cali Swag District’s tragically fallen members Montae “M-Bone” Tlbert and Cahron “JayAre” Childs.
Kendrick Lamar
“Money Trees” (2012)
Key lyric:
“Back to reality, we poor, ya bish / Another casualty at war, ya bish / Two bullets in my Uncle Tony’s head / He said one day I’ll be on tour, ya bish / That Louis Burgers never be the same / A Louis belt will never ease that pain / But I’mma purchase when that day is jerking / Pull off at Church’s, with Pirellis skirting”
Locating it: Lamar has set his landmark L.A. stories in his Compton hometown since his early recordings as K Dot. He’s paid particular attention to the Louis Burgers on Rosecrans Avenue for a heart-wrenching reason: His uncle was murdered there. The fast-food joint has a few locations. Lamar’s is known as Louis Burgers II. Another location, Louis Burgers III in Long Beach, earns mention in Vince Staples’ LBC-loving hit “Norf Norf.”
Becky G
“Becky From the Block” (2012)
Key lyric:
“Yo, what you know about the In-N-Out life? / And what you know about that 405 drive? / My life is changing quickly right before my eyes / It hits me every time that I’m on Hollywood and Vine / If you wanna date me, you gotta ask my daddy / And my 30 uncles, you can meet them in an alley / And one day I’mma bring home a Grammy / But no matter what I’ll be bringing home Randy’s Donuts”
Locating it: The artist born Rebecca Gomez zips across a vast expanse of the L.A. basin in her breakout hit, a riff on Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block.” In a few choice couplets, the singer moves from the traffic-jammed 405 to the archetypal Hollywood intersection to the LAX-adjacent doughnut mecca in her hometown of Inglewood. Since Becky G’s rise, Inglewood has landed an NFL team and billion-dollar stadium deal and witnessed the rebirth of the Forum. Randy’s Donuts has never been busier. Coincidence?
Frank Ocean
“Sweet Life” (2012)
Key lyric:
“The best song wasn’t the single, but you weren’t either / Living in Ladera Heights, the black Beverly Hills / Domesticated paradise, palm trees and pools / The water’s blue, swallow the pill / Keeping it surreal, whatever you like / Whatever feels good, whatever takes you mountain high”
Locating it: A snapshot of what seems to be a fling with an already hitched lover, Ocean’s version of the L.A. sweet life doesn’t occur in the Hollywood Hills or Bel Air but on the other side of the I-10. There, overlooking the L.A. basin to the north and Long Beach to the south, Ocean sings of a place where “the water’s blue.” Who doesn’t want to live in, or at least visit, Frank Ocean’s world?
Nipsey Hussle
“Crenshaw & Slauson” (2013)
Key lyric:
“Had to fight before we hustled, and it made us tough / Early ’90s, neighbor’s rooster used to wake us up / Mama had a bucket and a shack but we ain’t make a fuss / Blue Cutlass, no license, .380 tucked / Crenshaw and Slauson, true story, Zo, play the drums”
Locating it: Now known as the intersection where Nipsey Hussle was murdered in cold blood, “Crenshaw & Slauson” was written six years prior. At the time, the rapper’s love-letter to his neighborhood reminisced about a life in which roosters greeted the neighborhood every morning and gunfire bid them goodnight. Hussle told The Times’ August Brown in 2017 that he had a particular affection for World on Wheels, a nearby roller rink that the late artist helped restore. “In middle school, it was the place to be. In L.A., you have to grow up fast, and this was one place kids could go to have a party and be safe,” Hussle said. “DJ Quik, Suga Free, Snoop Dogg — these were records you could skate to ... People would make a record and go, ‘Oh, that’s for the rink.’ You’d have your club record, your radio record and your rink record.”
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
“Put Your Number on My Phone” (2014)
Key lyric:
“Hey Ariel, it’s Jessica / We met at the taco truck in Silver Lake / And I don’t know if you’re really busy or something / But I haven’t heard back from you / And I was just wondering like, if you could / Talk to me, it’s now or never, babe”
Locating it: Nothing’s more quintessentially L.A. than the line “We met at a taco truck.” Uttered during avant-pop songwriter Ariel Pink’s 2014 song as a voicemail left by a would-be hook-up, the song nails longing, romance and missed connections in the smartphone era.
Since his rise in the mid-2000s, the left-field pop songwriter born Ariel Rosenberg, raised in Beverly Hills, has lyrically explored the city. In another song, “Life in L.A.,” he rhymes the title with “Well, what can I say? / It’s a treasure to find / So many ways to unwind.” “Beverly Kills” celebrates “Beverly’s freaks ... think twice before you meet ’em / Made up of the finest comedians.” He characterized his songwriting aesthetic during a 2014 Times interview as being “this weird thing that’s not supposed to exist. This sort of mediocrity that exists somewhere in the forgotten ’90s and ’80s. It’s supposed to be the stuff that nobody listens to — the thing that got forgotten in the shuffle.”
Father John Misty
“Chateau Lobby #4
(In C for Two Virgins)” (2015)
Key lyric:
“Emma eats bread and butter / Like a queen would have ostrich and cobra wine / We’ll have Satanic Christmas Eve / And play piano in the Chateau lobby”
Locating it: In two unrhymed couplets, the artist born Josh Tillman crafts a short story worthy of its setting. Written to his wife, the song is set at the Chateau Marmont. Mr. Misty is at the piano as his love enjoys refreshments worthy of her stature: ostrich and cobra wine. It’s Christmas Eve. Hail Satan. The hotel’s mystique keeps the place booked year-round.
Vince Staples
“Norf Norf” (2015)
Key lyric:
“We Cripping, Long Beach city, pay a visit / Park Ramona, pop block the corner / Giving hell ’til it’s frozen over, I ain’t never ran from nothin’ ”
Locating it: Slang for north, the title of Staples’ early hit stems from his life in North Long Beach. Lyrically, Staples name-checks Louis Burger III, the Poppy Street of his youth and nearby Ramona Park. The chorus is one big boast to his Zip Code — and to his lanky frame: “From the city where the skinny carry strong heat / Norfside Long Beach / Norfside Long Beach.”
Kenny Chesney
“Settin’ the World on Fire” (2016)
Key lyric:
“Yeah we got drunk on La Cienega Boulevard / Taking pictures of people we thought were stars / It’s easy to give in to your heart / When you’re drunk on La Cienega Boulevard / When the song coming out of the speakers / Was the band that you had on your T-shirt / We were screaming ’cause all the streets were empty / And you kissed me, and we were / up all night and we were feeling so good”
Locating it: Though he didn’t write “Settin’ the World on Fire,” a duet with Pink, Chesney likely knows his way around Hollywood: His brief 2005 marriage to Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger was the talk of the gossip pages. In the song, we find our hero, likely in West Hollywood, getting drunk, listening to music and making out beside empty streets. But La Cienega extends south through Mid-City, Inglewood and Hawthorne. Was Chesney at Largo? Or maybe living the sweet life in Ladera Heights with Frank Ocean?
Kanye West
“No More Parties in L.A.” (2016)
Key lyric:
“Texting and driving down Mulholland Drive / That’s why I’d rather take the 405 / I be worried about my daughter, I be worried about Kim / But Saint is baby ’Ye, I ain’t worried about him”
Locating it: It does make a certain amount of sense, texting in the heavy traffic of the 405 instead of the winding Mulholland Drive. The rub is that the former runs north-south and the latter runs east-west. Regardless, when West raps that “Mulholland Drive need to put up some goddamn barricades,” he’s spitting truth.
Tyler, the Creator
“Okra” (2018)
Key lyric:
“Bitch you’re a bum, see you don’t understand / Yeah, I cut off some friends, ‘T where you been?’ / Bitch I’m in Bel-Air, been looking for land / Need a spot in the hills, not the beach, need a pool / Just to cool it, I do need the grass, not the sand
Locating it: The artist born Tyler Okonma came up in L.A. but rose to fame after he imagineered his own fantastical Southern California musical theme park, Odd Future. The rapper, producer, entrepreneur, designer and TV personality, who first appeared in The Times as a 15-year-old sophomore at the Media Arts Academy in Hawthorne (described as oper-ating “at a significantly higher voltage than the average teen”), has angled his way through the decade with a memorable buoyancy. He’s long frequented the Fairfax district, where he keeps a shop across from Canter’s Deli, so it makes sense that he’s vibing with Bel Air in “Okra.”
