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No free passOriginal gangsta rapper Ice Cube
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After 20 healthy years in the game and over 10 albums, staying relevant as a 40-year-old rapper may not be a given. For Ice Cube, born O’Shea Jackson, the recipe is actually quite simple. “If you’re a devoted b-boy, you know when it’s just flow and style, and when it’s serious shit. Most of the time, people know I’m not just rhyming. When you add serious content to an already good flow, I think it lasts longer than a bunch of singles and a bunch of radio hits.” Throughout his life, Cube received a lot of backlash and criticism from various groups, at times outright being accused of racism and anti-Semitism. “If they really listened to my records, they would realize that nobody gets a free pass. If you’re black, you don’t get a free pass. If you’re white, you don’t get a free pass. If you’re a man or a woman, you don’t get a free pass either. Police, politicians, reverends, everybody is held accountable on my records and everybody is criticized. People can pull out certain lyrics and highlight them but it’s music, it’s art, it’s poetry and it’s the truth. They can say what they want but my records are some of the most honest ever made.” As a young man who had entered the world of music like a hurricane with Compton colleagues N.W.A. by the age of 20, Cube, a seasoned rap veteran, has had more than his fair share of struggle in the music business, and stories to tell. “One of my most memorable times with N.W.A. was the day we performed in Detroit in 1989 and the police rushed the stage and caused a riot. They pulled M-80s [firecrackers] and made a big-ass mess. We were trying to get away because nobody wanted to get arrested, but they took us to jail, detained us and, at the end, they asked us for autographs. They just wanted to mess up our show for all of Detroit to see.” Even these days, with last year’s Raw Footage, Ice Cube manages to put out records that are thoughtful, with enough lightheartedness to be catchy. His last two singles—“Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It,” a satire on rap music being used as a modern-day scapegoat, and “Why Me?,” which reflects on the results of black-on-black violence—are records that serve two functions, just like Ice Cube’s whole career, to entertain and to enlighten. The man who penned Eazy-E’s “Boyz N the Hood” and half of Straight Outta Compton never runs out of material to jot down and is confident that he will rap “as long as my tongue works.” When asked about his next target, he answers in a heartbeat. “The future. Man versus machine, the robots that are taking our jobs. That’s where it’s all going. The world is less and less dependent on human work. Car companies are gonna take the bailout money and make factories that are all automated, with just a few people working there. I’m not on no fucking Terminator shit. I’m talking about the real deal, what’s going on in factories all around the world right now. I think that’s what needs to be talked about.” WITH BAD NEWS BROWN, CHUB-E |
