Before there was food, Jonathan Gold was a groundbreaking music critic

LOS ANGELES - He was a trained cellist with a background in composition and conducting, a defender of the worst heavy metal bands L.A. had to offer and often credited, or blamed, for inventing the term "gangsta rap."

Jonathan Gold was a music fan and writer before he was a game-changing food critic. But he approached both disciplines with a similar sense of discovery, finding in each inspiration in a side of Los Angeles that had rarely been the subject of serious cultural introspection.

Gold, who died Saturday at the age of 57, championed the under-covered, the misunderstood, the segregated and the sidelined. Throughout the 1980s he wrote about fledgling music acts that pop's established critics had otherwise ignored or failed to realize existed. He considered N.W.A, Snoop Dogg, Young