 Ice
Cube is one of the most enduring, versatile, controversial
and engaging figures ever to emerge out of hip-hop. At 30, he
is one of this generation's cultural icons. After establishing
himself as a film phenomenon, acclaimed actor, screenwriter, director
and producer, Ice Cube (born O'Shea Jackson) comes back to his
solo music career with a vengeance. He has spent most of 1999-2000
working at an astonishing rate, completing not one, but two full-length
albums the first part titled War & Peace - Volume 1 (The
War Disc) followed by the current album, War & Peace
- Vol. 2 (The Peace Disc).
The first volume War was released on November 17, 1998 on Priority
Records with Peace following on March 21, 2000. Just as his classic
Death Certificate presented a "Death Side" and a "Life
Side", Cube explores the war/peace dialectic in well over 2 hours
of new music.
Further fueling rumors of a NWA reunion album, War & Peace
Vol. 2 (The Peace Disc) opens with the simple greeting "Hell
Low", a Dre produced selection (co-produced by Mel Man) featuring
Dr. Dre and MC Ren; a comedic track "You Ain't Gotta Lie"
featuring Chris Rock and appearances by Krayzie Bone on the commercial
single "Until We Rich." Other notable artists featured
on the album are Mack 10 and Jayo Felony with production on several
tracks by Chucky Thompson, Battlecat, and Puffy to name a few.
The War record allowed Cube to throw down the gauntlet on tracks
like "Dr. Frankenstein," "Once Upon A Time In the Projects 2"
and on the single "Pushin' Weight," Cube raised the stakes for
the present day rap game while reclaiming his legacy. War provided
cutting edge soundscapes with mega-platinum rockers Korn making
a guest appearance on "Fuck Dying." Cube performed with Korn on
their "Family Values" tour. "To expose Korn fans to my music is
cool, because most of their audience is only exposed to my movies.
It reminded me of when I went out on Lollapalooza (1992), where
I was the alternative to that alternative show" says Cube of the
experience.
Although Cube keeps it gangsta on the Peace, LP, Vol. 2
is more dance/club oriented using samples from popular party anthems
crating a lighter mood. Cube can't say enough about the music.
"War and Peace are my best records in years. The production on
both albums is far superior to anything I've ever released. Peace
is gonna be a different look; it's a different record than any
I have ever done. Lyrically, War covers a lot of ground-moving
from rap's battlegrounds to the Los Angeles killing fields." "Ghetto
Vet," "Penitentiary" and the masterful "3 Strikes You In" are
as incisive pieces of social commentary as he's ever penned. Just
as every coin has two sides, Peace represents the other side of
Cube.
Ice Cube caught the rap bug in the ninth grade when a classmate
named Kiddo challenged him in a typing class. "One day, he asked
me if I ever wrote a rap before. I told him, you write one, I
write on and we'll see which one come out better and I won," recalls
Cube. He went on to form his first crew, C.I.A., with future collaborators
Sir Jinx and K-Dee, and began hanging in the burgeoning South
Central Club scene. Through Jinx's cousin, he met Dr. Dre and
together they began rhyming for nightclub patrons over the hits
of the day. "We was doing these dirty raps strictly for the club
audiences," he says. "When that started catching on, we started
making mix tapes. We would rap on what was going on in the neighborhood
and they were selling. Eazy-E had a partner named Ron-de-Vu, Dre
was in the World Class Wreckin Crew, and I was in C.I.A. We were
all committed to these groups, so we figured we'd make an all-star
group and just do dirty records on the side." That all-star group
would become known as Niggaz With Attitude (NWA).
In early 1987, Cube wrote "Boyz-N-The-Hood" for Eazy-E and "Dopeman"
and "8-ball" for NWA and they went into the studio to record.
He knew he was doing something different, but wasn't sure about
his prospects. "The rap game wasn't looking too solid at that
time, so I decided to go ahead and go to school." When he left
for The Phoenix Institute of Technology, the records were just
hitting the streets. By the time he completed his degree a year
later, both Eazy's and NWA's singles had sold hundreds of thousands
of copies. He came back to write the rhymes for the albums that
would be Eazy Duz It and Straight Outta Compton
and the world would never be quite the same.
NWA's Straight Outta Compton, in retrospect, was the most
influential album since The Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks.
Straight Outta Compton didn't break taboos so much as blow
them away with rapid-action scattershot. The excitement they inspired
was proportional to the outrage they incited. Newsweek dismissed
the record as "The Godfather in gutter language." FBI Assistant
director, Milt Ahlerich, sent a letter to the label condemning
the record as encouraging "violence against and disrespect for
the law-enforcement officer." Ahlerich warned, "Advocating violence
and assault is wrong and we in the law enforcement community take
exception to such action." Sales rocked past platinum. "Straight
Outta Compton has had the biggest impact on rap music than
any other album to this day," says Cube. "We opened the door where
you can say exactly what you really want to say without having
to sugar-coat , without having to hold back."
But by 1989, things were beginning to sour between Cube and Jerry
Heller, then NWA's manager. Cube was involved in writing 10 of
the 13 tracks on Straight Outta Compton, including the
entirety of "Dopeman," "8 Ball" and "Express Yourself" and he
felt he was due more than the $30,000 that he received for records
that had sold 3 million units. "I was broke before I jumped in
that shit, so it wasn't hard to walk away. I preferred it that
way," Cube recalls. "At the time the two producers that was worth
fucking with was Dr. Dre and The Bomb Squad. If I couldn't get
Dre, I was going to the Bomb Squad." He broke east and began collaborating
with Public Enemy.
Energized by the rush of liberation and inspired by the exchange
of ideas with Chuck D and the other members of the Public Enemy
camp, he turned in the stunning Amerikkka's Most Wanted.
"Fuck you, Ice Cube!" went the chorus of "The Nigga You Love to
Hate," and immediately the hip-hop nation was screaming it. The
record went gold in 10 days, platinum in three months. "I can
never play out," smiles Cube, "because people are still biting
my styles from that record."
In his book It's Not About A Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance,
Brian Cross wrote of the album's impact, "Amerikkka's Most
Wanted sought to give a face to (the) criminal underclass
and this face was to be furrow-browed, jheri-curled, beanie-clad
face of Cube himself. Cube to this day is the foremost hip hop
meta-critic, providing listeners not only with stories, but potential
criticism of his practice from different perspectives."
The follow-up EP Kill At Will went gold just as quickly.
In contrast to the booming "Endangered Species" remix and the
club friendly "Jackin For Beats," "Dead Homiez" was a surprise.
When it was first released, Cube ran the risk of the appearing
soft, exposing a vulnerable, sentimental side; instead, audiences
embraced the track. He had correctly measured the depth of emotion
amongst his violence-weary fans. "Dead Homiez" created an entirely
new theme for gangsta rappers. Cube was thinking seven steps ahead
of the game.
"I was reading a lot of books. I was just learning about the world,
paying attention to world history, political views. Up to that
point, I was just rolling through life trying to get money," says
Cube. His readings "gave me my freedom mentally to deal with this
world. The main focus on what I was learning was coming from Minister
Louis Farrakhan and the honorable Elijah Muhammed. I did a lot
of self-studying knowledge of self, because I'm far from a follower."
On Halloween 1991, Ice Cube's second solo LP, Death Certificate
had advance orders of over a million copies and debuted at number
2 on the Billboard Charts. Death Certificate spoke to what
it meant to be a young black male in an increasingly pressured
space, one strained by deindustrialization, drug economies, state
repression, police brutality, and immigration. Released just months
before the LA riots, it singularly captured the tenor of the times,
the feel of a generation. On April 29 1992, Death Certificate
sounded prophetic.
That year, The Predator, debuted at #1 on the pop and R&B
charts simultaneously and went platinum in four days. The on-the-corner
commentaries of "When Will They Shoot?, "I'm Scared," "Now I gotta
Wet'cha" and "We had To Tear This Muthafucka Up" were rounded
out by the hits "Wicked" and "It Was A Good Day." Cube had arrived
as the chronicler of his generation.
Lethal Injection was his fourth album in four years, but
although it also went platinum on the hot groove of the George
Clinton collaboration "Bop Gun" and the haunting "Ghetto Bird,"
Cube felt the rap game changing subtly. "At that time, nobody
wanted to hear that kind of rap. The whole (conscious) era had
peaked with the release of the Malcolm X Movie. The G-funk era
was coming in. It was a whole different tone in the music. People
didn't want to take rap that serious," he says.
"I was doing movies, directing videos, trying to produce other
groups," Cube says. He had directed dozens of videos (he has done
20 to date) and his filmmaking career was set to take off. He
had always struck a compelling image in his own videos, whether
the rending "Dead Homiez," the pulsing "Steady Mobbin,' or the
frantic "Natural Born Killaz."
Based on his amazing performance in John Singleton's "Boyz in
the Hood," however, he was in demand. He went on to appear in
"Trespass," "CB4," Charles Burnett's "The Glass Shield," Singleton's
"Higher Learning," Anaconda," and most recently costarred in "3
Kings" with George Clooney. After co-screenwriting the script
"Friday" with DJ Pooh - a balancing, hilarious view of a day in
the life of a couple of brothers from South Central - Ice Cube
followed up with "Next Friday" the successful, top grossing film
which outsold blockbuster films "Stuart Little," "The Green Mile,"
and "The Hurricane" it its first week becoming the most successful
New Line Film next to the Austin Power's sizzler. Cube also executive
produced and starred in "Dangerous Ground" and "The Player's Club,"
a film he wrote, co-produced and directed to critical acclaim.
The movie grossed over $25 million in domestic receipts alone.
"People always ask, "When are you gonna stop doing records? Or
'Do you prefer doing movies or records?" Cube responds, "If opportunities
present they self, you take them. I think I can do this from all
different sides of entertainment," he says.
Cube somehow also found the time to oversee the production of
a number of homies. Two of them, Mack 10 and WC, joined him to
become the Westside Connection, after a few successful outings.
"I was tired of doing solo albums," Cube says. "I wanted to feel
the group thing. With me, Mack 10 and WC, our chemistry was so
tight that the Westside Connection was born." The group's allegiance
to the West courted controversy. "Our whole purpose from the beginning
was to make sure that people wasn't gonna just snatch our style
from under us and give us no credit and no props," he says. "I'm
not really tripping on straight being from the west coast. But
when I was doing it, I heard a lotta shit being said about the
west coast, so I stood up for the west coast." With Bow Down's
double platinum sales, seems there must have been a lot of bi-coastal
unity after all. Westside Connection is scheduled to release another
album May 2000.
Finally it became time to return to the solo spotlight. "When
you trying to do records, write a movie, produce a movie, it's
hard to make good music. I wanted to put all the other stuff down,
be finished with The Player's Club and do my album, he says, "War
& Peace is my best record since Death Certificate."
Although hip-hop fans are notoriously fickle, Cube has stayed
atop the games for over a decade. "I still sell the same amount
of records. I still get a big reception," he says. "In hip hop,
people always want new artists, but when I really get down, nobody
puts a record together better than me. So I'll always be here.
Long as I stay consistent and keep my heart in it, I'm a be here."
Biography From IceCube.com
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