Snoop Dogg blows off Jonathan Gold

Before he wrote about food, Jonathan Gold wrote about music. During a guest DJ spot on KCRW last week, Gold recounted his early love of classical music and revealed a super-soft spot for both punk rock and gangsta rap.

"Snoop Doggy Dogg is kind of the Miles Davis of rap," Gold tells host Garth Trinidad before launching into a story about being repeatedly blown off by Dr. Dre and the man who penned the always classic "Gin and Juice" while writing a cover story about the pair for Rolling Stone.

"It was when they were recording 'Doggystyle,' they kept blowing me off, so I kept showing up at the recording studio every day at noon, waiting till they showed up about three and then they'd blow me off and blow me off -- but I got to talk to all the bodyguards, all the best friends, to the moms, to the preacher. There was a time when I spent more time with Snoop's family than I did with my own," Gold tells Trinidad.

What else does Gold listen to? The Germs. He got into punk after seeing X and the Screamers at the Whiskey. "And it was as transforming as anything I've ever done," he says. That was obviously before he ate a live prawn at the Living Fish Center in Koreatown.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: Frank Micelotta / MTV