Streetwise mobster-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is back, but this time Chili has abandoned the fickle movie industry and veered into the music business, tangling with Russian mobsters and gangsta rappers and taking a talented, feisty young singer named Linda Moon under his wing. From the recording studio to an Aerosmith concert to the MTV Music Awards, he manipulates events to watch them play out the Chili way, using his signature blend of wiseguy skills and negotiation tactics. It's a dangerous business, and everyone's looking for their next big hit.

In this sequel to "Get Shorty", Chili Palmer is tired of the movie production business after being forced to make a useless sequel starring Martin Weir. When a music producer friend is gunned down, he offers to help his widow run the business. Checking a talent that the producer had been talking to him about puts Chili at odds with a sleazy music manager, his gay bodyguard, and his equally sleazy partner. The mismanagement of the music company also gets Chili threatened by members of the Russian mafia and a suburban rap-mogul producer & his thugs led by his bumbling relative. All turns out well when it is determined that the dead producer's wife had at one time been the laundress for Aerosmith and making contact with Aerosmith leader Steven Tyler at a Lakers game, gets their protégé a duet with Tyler at an Aerosmith concert.