Kim Hill

* The hip-hop soul singer has a new homemade record, “Sugahill,” available exclusively at Amoeba Records in Hollywood. She also sang on Black Eyed Peas’ “Behind the Front” and “Bridging the Gap.”

Vintage Hangout: I like Fais Do-Do because they are down on West Adams Boulevard, and both the owner and the booker are great and you’ve got to love the doorman, who always wears a red carnation and a black suit. You just can’t find that anywhere else. He is definitely vintage. So I love that room, and they serve great catfish.

Not Too Down-Home: My favorite place is this little soul-food Mexican spot. It’s a hole-in-the-wall called Sky’s on Pico and Hauser, and you would slap somebody’s mama to have one of their shrimp tacos. If I’m going to leave my house to go eat--because I love to cook and I think I’m a great cook--I have to feel welcome and there has to be a level of home style to it without worrying about a roach running across the table. I don’t need it to be that down-home. They have the best food and great homemade lemonade. That’s definitely a place that I go to at least twice a week.

Supporting the Scene: Although there are a lot of record stores across the world that carry my 12-inch, Amoeba Records in Hollywood is the first store that actually carries my CD. I did an in-store for them and two days before it, they said, “I hear you’re selling CDs for your show. We want them for the store,” and I said, “Well, for my artwork, I go to Copymat on Sunset and I don’t put labels on them because sometimes they can’t be read in people’s CD players,” and they were like, “We don’t care. We want them in the store.” So, they bar-coded my homemade CDs. You have to love that. The people who work there really care about music, and you know they’re not getting paid a lot of money. They’re like, “Hey, this just came in.”

Handmade Jewelry: Another one of my favorite spots is this jewelry store on the corner of Melrose and Martell called Sage. The owner is a very young entrepreneur. She pretty much got her start when she was about 22 making jewelry for another designer, and she landed an account with Barney’s, which enabled her to open up her own business. And I’ve never seen anything like it. You know you’ve invested in a great piece when you buy something there. You’ve got to walk in with at least $300, but it’s worth it, because it’s definitely the kind of thing you can’t wait to pass on to your grandkids.

Old Recipes: I love Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch, the soul food spot in the Marina. Adolph and Mary Dulan are the owners, and Adolph makes his way to pretty much everybody’s table and tells stories about black culture and our food and how he’s incorporated his great-grandmother’s recipes into a modern cuisine. And you’re like, “OK, nice to meet you” and he’s like, “ ... then when I was 15....” Another thing that’s great about that restaurant is that Kizzy was a slave who was very important in the movement, and when you walk in, you get a piece of literature about why the restaurant was named after her and what her contribution was to the culture.