Entertainment
A Grammy-winning producer. An incarcerated father. And a 'fairy tale' reunion
Snoop Dogg’s private, self-branded Doggyland casino resides in an unmarked building in Inglewood, and on a mid-January on Monday, its paisley print blackjack table and Indoggo branded bar were commandeered by Buffalo, N.Y., rapper Benny the Butcher for a video shoot.
With cameras rolling, Snoop and Benny cackled in drunken laughter at the center of the scene, while rapping along to their forthcoming collaboration. To their left sat Hit-Boy, the song’s producer, while Big Hit — Hit-Boy’s father — served as a human money counter on their right, throwing bills and twisting fingers.
“Big Hit, what up?” Snoop Dogg exclaimed as the two exchanged a dap in between shots. “I just bought your album again. Too damn important.”
Later that same week — on the other side of a quick Las Vegas sprint that found them in an impromptu session with Ty Dolla Sign — Hit-Boy and Big Hit hunkered down at Chalice Studios, bobbing heads in unison while watching and rewatching the final product. Once they’ve soaked in every shot to their satisfaction, Hit-Boy plopped in front of his computer and scrolled through his assortment of samples; as soon as he settled on a vocal chop, Big Hit worked through a verse idea, freestyling references and metaphors while trying to catch the beat.
“All of this is a dream come true,” said Big Hit, 52. “It feels like a fairy tale.”
“I lost everything,” says Big Hit of his time in prison. “The struggle is real in there.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
This freewheeling schedule of studios, shoots and A-list shoulder-rubbing is now the norm for Big Hit, born Chauncey Hollis Sr., who’s fast-tracking the rap career he’s long envisioned in tandem with his son. But it’s also wholly unfamiliar. Big Hit has spent most of his adult life in prison on drug-related charges — from 1991 to 2004, with intermittent stints to follow — laying his head in a cell as Hit-Boy (Chauncey Hollis Jr.) established himself as one of hip-hop’s dominant producers.
While shuffling through the system, Big Hit says, he survived a brutal jumping at the hands of authorities that left him flatlined and strapped to a gurney as doctors questioned if he’d survive. “They had us standing from cell to cell for like a week, waiting to get a bed,” he recalled. “We made a plan to stand up for our rights, and got screamed on and boo-bopped. They went overboard with me, because I was the one who wouldn’t stop.”
In prison, he contracted COVID three separate times. Workouts required cramming letters into bags to facilitate bicep curls; he learned to stuff his bed sheets in the vents to catch the dust and protect from respiratory illness. When he was released in May 2023, he brought home his final prison meal — two slices of bread and bologna — as a spoiled reminder of the conditions he survived, and the place he can’t allow himself to return.
“I wish I had somebody to really tell me the other side of the dope game,” he said. “It was all true — the glitter, the girls, the cars, the money, and all that. But people wouldn’t lace you up on the darker side of the situation. I lost everything. The struggle is real in there.”
Meanwhile on the outside, Hit-Boy, 36, dove headfirst into music while stashing earnings to send to his father and care for his mother. His most commercially successful creations are as thunderous as they are unavoidable: Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “N— in Paris,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle,” Beyoncé’s “Sorry,” Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode.”
Hit-Boy attends the Grammy Awards in 2022.
(Johnny Nunez / Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
This February he’ll return to the Grammys, where he’s again nominated for producer of the year, and for the first time in his career, he’ll walk the red carpet with his mother, father and 3-year-old son.
It’s a moment he and his father have long visualized.
“I’ve won three Grammys, but my pops has never been out to see it,” Hit-Boy said. “We want that producer of the year award. Not too many Black people have even been nominated — let alone won — so being considered is already dope. It’d mean a lot to the younger me; ‘you really did what you wanted to do.’ ”
But beyond the gold trophy, Hit-Boy’s primary focus has been helping his father establish a new life, rehabilitated through the music rather than the streets. It’s a dream birthed in 2014, when Big Hit featured on Hit-Boy’s posse cut “Grindin’ My Whole Life” and caught a local hit through the waterworks-inducing “G’z Don’t Cry,” but the candle was snuffed out after Big Hit committed a hit-and-run in Humboldt County, sending him away once again, this time for nine years. (Big Hit says he was robbed after the crash and fled the scene as gunshots rang out, and didn’t know someone in the other car had been gravely injured.)
“He’s been out eight months,” says Hit-Boy, right, of his father, left, “but it’s really 30 years of programming. A lot of his life was taken from him.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
Rather than working side-by-side in the studio, Big Hit wrote rhymes in prison, plotting an eventual debut album that would be produced by his son. In December 2023, the vision was realized through “The Truth Is in My Eyes,” which wraps a lifetime’s worth of street tales into a triumphant body of work. On this album (and on “Paisley Dreams,” a collaboration project with the Game), Big Hit spits each word as if the mic could be snatched away from him at any moment.
The studio has become a safe haven for Big Hit as he acclimates himself to an entirely new world. It’s a task easier said than done, but those with a front row seat are already seeing the shift in his mind set.
“I sat with him in the studio for hours when he had been out for maybe 10 days, and the yard was still on him, in terms of his energy,” said DJ Hed, host at the Inglewood-based Home Grown Radio.
“He was ready to go back to what he knew how to do, to get some money,” DJ Hed continued. “I had to tell him, ‘Your son is really a legend out here, and if you go all in with the music, I think it’ll work out for you.’ I saw him at his release party, and he told me he was all for the music now, offers on the table, making money. It was a moment that reminded me why I do what I do.”
“It’s years and years of him being desensitized, thinking to himself that if he’s not seeing it right here right now, it’s not happening,” Hit-Boy said. “He’s been out eight months, but it’s really 30 years of programming. A lot of his life was taken from him.”
“What we’re doing is miraculous,” says Hit-Boy, right. “I’ve had people say, ‘Y’all made me reach out to my dad again.’ That’s priceless to me.”
(Walter W. Brady / For The Times)
Big Hit endured a rough upbringing in Pasadena. His father, who grew up an orphan, smoke and drank with him. Big Hit was an alcoholic before he reached his teens.
He calls himself a “young brat” who made a habit of cussing out his teachers and getting into fights.
“By the time [my father] saw I was out of control, it was too late,” he said. “That beast had been shaped and molded in me. I remember one day we were on the porch, and he said, ‘You want to be just like your daddy, huh.’ I looked him in the eyes, and he told me, ‘N—, you scaring me.’ He tried to change it, but it was too late.”
Big Hit ran away at the age of 11 and turned to the streets; a natural hustler, he advanced through the ranks quickly. In 1991, he was caught with 3 kilograms of cocaine, more than a dozen guns and bundles of cash.
Hit-Boy had just turned 5 years old when his father was convicted and sent to prison for what would become 13 years, and although the two did their best to stay in contact, he felt the pain of his dad’s absence. Hit-Boy and his mother moved around Los Angeles, sleeping on floors or at friends’ and relatives’ places; at one point, the family resided in Upland, where a 2-for-99-cents promotion at Arby’s became their daily sustenance.
Hit-Boy’s uncle, Rodney Benford, was a member of Troop, the Pasadena R&B group who scored a smattering of R&B hits in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Some of Hit-Boy’s earliest memories were nights at his uncle’s house, giving him a firsthand look at the life a successful music career could facilitate.
“I’d go to prison to see my dad, and then I’m going back to my uncle’s house, and he’s throwing a party,” he said. “I saw the worst of the worst in prison, and the best of the best with my uncle.”
Hit-Boy tried to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and create a rap group, until his collaborators pushed the founder out of the picture. He took his future into his own hands instead, learning how to produce with a cracked copy of FL Studio and rapping into a USB microphone.
Navigating the business has proved the toughest part of the journey; seeking quick cash, Hit-Boy signed a production deal with Universal Music Publishing Group in 2007, to which he remains tied after more than a decade of fighting.
“I realized it was a bad deal in 2011, when ‘N— in Paris’ came out,” Hit-Boy said. “I thought I had my hit, it was all over the radio, so I went to UMPG, saying I need a check. They were like, ‘You already signed this contract, so it’s nothing we can really do for you.’ ”
(Thanks to help from Jay-Z and Roc Nation Chief Executive Officer Desiree Perez, he was able to finally secure an end date to his UMPG contract that will soon allow him to move on.)
Recently, he’s hit a hot streak on his joint albums with Nas, the first of which (“King’s Disease,” 2021) earned the Queens legend his first Grammy. But other high-profile collaborations have been bittersweet — Hit-Boy and his manager said the producer is still chasing royalties from a number of multi-platinum records made with major label artists.
“You’ll help someone have one of their biggest moments, and they’ll act like they don’t even know you,” Hit-Boy said. “I’ve won Grammys with people I can’t get in contact with.”
Stories like that are one reason why Hit-Boy and his dad are attempting to chart a new path, betting on themselves and building it all in-house. Nothing about what they’re doing is conventional — a 52-year-old rapper, releasing his debut album executive produced by his son. For them, releasing “The Truth Is in My Eyes” exclusively for purchase on Bandcamp, rather than making it available for streaming on Spotify and other platforms, was another empowering move, allowing true supporters to connect with the music in a deeper way.
But even more important than the album’s sales is the impact it’s already made in the community.
“I was talking to the Game, and he was telling me how many people have tried to put their cousin, or their uncle, or their family on, and it did not work at all,” Hit-Boy said. “What we’re doing is miraculous. I’ve had people say, ‘Y’all made me reach out to my dad again.’ That’s priceless to me. That’s the success.”
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
Entertainment
Review: Trigger warning? ‘For Want of a Horse’ gives new meaning to the term ‘animal lover’
“For Want of a Horse,” a play by Olivia Dufault receiving its world premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre, wants to have a rational conversation about a taboo topic that can provoke instant outrage.
The subject is zoophilia, not to be confused with bestiality, though for many of us it will be a distinction without much of a difference.
Calvin (Joey Stromberg), a good-looking, mild-mannered married accountant, has harbored a secret for much of his life. He has a thing for horses. His erotic interest began at an early age, and all his efforts to lead a normal life have left him depressed and contemplating suicide.
His wife, Bonnie (Jenny Soo), is a permissive kindergarten teacher who’s having difficulty restraining a girl in her class who has discovered the joys of masturbation. Worried about her husband, she discovers through his browsing history that he’s once again visiting strange animal sites.
She suggests he keep a horse, explaining that she doesn’t want to end up a widow or divorcée. Calvin is taken aback by her generosity but has come to recognize that his preference is more than a kink. It’s part of his identity — and maybe the only part that makes his life seem worth living.
Joey Stromberg and Jenny Soo in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
A horse named Q-Tip (Griffin Kelly) enters the couple’s lives. A stable is secured, and the mare, who senses that something strange is going on, is indulged with apples and caresses.
Kelly, a statuesque presence in a dress, harness and boots, brings the horse to life with wild, unpredictable movements. The sheer size of the animal poses a threat to humans. One kick, as Q-Tip herself explains in one of her thought-bubble monologues, is capable of penetrating a steel wall. But controlling an animal’s food supply is an effective way of winning over its trust.
Calvin has found support in the online zoophilia community. PJ (Steven Culp), a man whose current inamorata is a bichon frise, is considering moving to a country where zoophilia isn’t illegal. He’s tired of the shame and the secrecy. He’s proud of his attachment to pooch, even if his thing for dogs has cost him contact with his daughter and ex-wife.
Dufault doesn’t shy away from sexual details. For PJ, intimacy depends on peanut butter. Calvin describes the physical signals that reveal Q-Tip’s erotic satisfaction. The play occasionally descends into sitcom humor. (PJ says he’s considering creating a human-dog dating app called Rin Tin Tinder.) But mostly the subdued tone steers clear of sensationalism.
The production, directed by Elana Luo, is scrupulously well-acted by the four-person cast. Stromberg makes Calvin seem not only reasonable but surprisingly sensitive. Soo’s Bonnie sweetly embodies the excesses of a kind of progressive piety. As PJ, Culp gruffly embraces his role as the play’s polemical fire-starter. And Kelly’s Q-Tip, in the production’s most physically demanding performance, straddles the human-animal divide with theatrical aplomb.
Steven Culp, left, and Joey Stromberg in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
The open-mindedness that Dufault, a trans playwright, brings to the play creates some dramatic slack. Possibly the same fear of making value judgments that has inhibited Bonnie from imposing common-sense discipline in her classroom has robbed “For Want of a Horse” of a propulsive point of view.
The play moves monotonously between Calvin and Bonnie’s bedroom and the stable. Scenic designer Alex Mollo has worked out an efficient way of shifting between these realms by employing the same set of wooden trunks. But the argument of the play doesn’t so much build as elapse.
Time takes its toll, and Calvin eventually has to make a decision. But the character who interested me most was Bonnie, whose reality is only glimpsed. The play tacitly uses her husband’s threat of suicide as a trump card. Zoophilia isn’t merely a fetish for Calvin but a nonnegotiable part of his identity.
This questionable assumption can be psychologically scrutinized not only from Calvin’s point of view but also from his wife’s. The play wants to have an intelligent debate, but it doesn’t want to interrogate certain political positions too skeptically.
At one point, Bonnie objects when Calvin compares his situation to that of homosexuality, but the conversation ends there. The reality is that the right wing has been making a similar claim, arguing that same-sex marriage opens the door to bestiality, polygamy and incest. “For Want of a Horse” inadvertently lends legitimacy to this line of reasoning.
Griffin Kelly in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
Not that extremist positions should be off limits, but they ought to be more rigorously addressed. Similarly, Bonnie’s concern about the issue of consent — how can a horse say yes to intercourse with a human — is introduced only to be dismissed in a shrug of mild-mannered bothsidesism.
While watching “For Want of a Horse,” I recalled a program on PBS called “My Wild Affair” that wasn’t about zoophilia but about the problematic nature of human bonds with untamed animals. Relationships with a seal, an elephant and a rhino, for example — obsessive, protective, loving friendships — all seemed to end if not in outright tragedy, then in shattering heartbreak.
Q-Tip is rightfully given the play’s last word, and Kelly, an actor (HBO’s “The Book of Queer”), writer and comedian, is the production’s driving force. We can never know what’s inside this mare’s mind because Q-Tip’s brain has evolved so differently from our own. Kelly plays the anthropomorphic game while retaining some of the inscrutability of a four-legged creature.
It is through language that we, as humans, traverse the chasm separating us from one another. That’s not possible with animals, even with our closest domestic companions. (Try explaining a necessary medical procedure to a cat.)
“For Want of a Horse” sets out to speak about the unspeakable, but its construction may be too tame for such a wild subject.
‘For Want of a Horse’
Where: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays; 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 25
Tickets: $15-$42.75
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Info: echotheatercompany.com
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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