Ice Cube - Interview (Answers fans questions too)

[The Predator]

His favourite beat that he ever rapped on was...

Ice Cube
Interview



Ice Cube: ‘Keep your reparations. It’s about access to capital, and we’re being shut out’
As told to Safi Bugel

As he gears up to tour the UK this year, the rapper and actor answers your questions on racial injustice, what he’d say to Eazy-E, and how he wrote the ultimate diss track

Doughboy is the most heartbreaking character in Boyz N the Hood. I find your performance so raw and authentic. What informed it?
I actually grew up not too far from where we shot that movie, so I knew guys like Tre who didn’t wanna gang bang, just wanted to live his life and be happy. I knew cats like Doughboy that was dead set on gaining respect in the neighbourhood. When Laurence Fishburne played Tre’s father in the movie, he told me to not act and to just be Doughboy. That made me relax and do what I knew was right; go with my instincts.

You took white America’s racism and shoved it back in its face articulately. Have you ever wondered what you’d have done as a young man if you hadn’t had to fight against racial injustice?
It’s a weight and an anchor that holds back production. Without that constant obstacle from all directions – and sometimes it’s an unseen obstacle – I would be bigger and better, no doubt. We all would. Even white people, because when you lock somebody up, the correction officers are in jail too. So, to come up with systems to hold people back, you’re actually holding yourself back.

I don’t know if I would still be rapping or not. Would rap even exist if that [racial injustice] wasn’t there? Would the blues, rhythm and blues, exist? Would rock’n’roll be able to come out of rhythm and blues if it wasn’t there? My full potential may be bigger than just rap if I was able to live that out. And not only me, but my brothers and sisters, my parents, my grandparents. If our whole generation was able to live like most people without these kind of obstacles, then we’d be bigger than white people, to be honest. We’d be more advanced, further down the road, without the harnesses that keep you from reaching your full potential.

If you had to choose two rappers to join your team in a rap battle, who would they be and why?
Eminem is one of the best rappers that’s ever blessed the mic, and I feel the same way about Lil Wayne – I wouldn’t mind going into battle with those two.

My boys’ – aged 11 and nine – favourite song is It Was a Good Day. They spit every word with a force of life approaching your own. What advice do you have for young men coming up today?
Nothing’s more powerful than a made-up mind. So, if you make up your mind and do something, only you can stop you. You might listen to somebody and they might convince you to not do it, but it’s still your decision. My next advice would be: if you mind your own business, you live longer.

When you quit NWA and headed to the east coast to make AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, it seemed like a make-or-break moment. Did you ever suffer any private doubts?
No. When I left NWA, I felt liberated: I could do what I felt was right. In NWA, I didn’t always have the say on which way the group went or our topics, that was kind of in the hands of Eazy and Dre. I wouldn’t have done a song like [electro track] Panic Zone, I’d have been like “hell no” – but I was outvoted. My favourite producers at the time were the Bomb Squad, it wasn’t Dr Dre, and so I was in good hands. If I flopped, I would’ve been fine with that because I wasn’t making a lot of money with NWA anyway! I felt like we came up together, we struggled, and as soon as we made it to the top, it blew up in our face.


What’s one thing you would have liked to say to Eazy-E, but didn’t?
I love you for being a fearless leader. That’s probably the words I would’ve wanted to say to him before he died [in 1995, from an Aids-related illness]. I saw him before he passed away, in New York at a club called Tunnel. He was with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, I was with Biggie and Puffy. I saw Eazy by the bar and we just started talking to each other like nothing ever happened. He was just telling me that he wanted to do another record together. I was down to do it, but I knew he had a situation with Dr Dre at the time so I told him: if you clear it up with Dre, I’m down, just let me know. The club closed, it emptied out, and we were still talking. We went outside, it was freezing and we couldn’t get a cab, I remember that, and I went inside. I was like, I’m gonna go talk to the club owner and see if he’ll give us a ride to the hotel. He said nah, and he was by himself, he just started walking. And that was the last time I seen him.

You studied architecture draughtmanship at one point. Do you still have any interest in it?
I don’t do sketches or blueprints no more, I let that go when my rap career really started to take off. But I can look at a building and kind of know what it took to put it up. I studied for a year at trade school. It taught me a lot of discipline and that you have to plan before you build anything.

Coming from a hip-hop background, do you ever feel typecast as an actor?
You can feel typecast, but I feel like I don’t just wanna play anything and anybody. Some actors will play a chicken dinner if that’s the role. I’m not that kinda guy – I like to stay in my wheelhouse. I like playing Craig in Friday, I like playing Calvin in Barbershop. I would do Bucum again from All About the Benjamins; I would do another Ride Along if a good script came along.

As someone with such influence in diverse communities, did you ever think about going into politics?
No. Unless they king me, I’d be a king. But I won’t be a politician. They don’t have no power, they’re begging all the time. I wouldn’t do that well. So either make me king, or nothing.

With intergenerational wealth being so low among Black Americans, do you think there is a legitimate case for reparations?
There’s a legitimate case for cut the bullshit, you know? We know it’s all about access to capital, and we’re being shut out of that access. It’s simple. Stop doing that shit and keep your reparations. What good is reparations gonna do, if you’re still gonna fuck us with the banking system? The system that we’re all slaves to. You got 13% of the people in America trying to live off 0.5% – that’s how much money flows through our neighbourhoods [a 2021 US Federal Reserve study states Black households account for 15.6% of the US population and hold 2.9% of wealth]. Of course there’s crime, because that percentage cannot live off that wealth. So, stop playing those games and we’ll solve our own problems – which nobody wants us to do, obviously.

Which one of your post-NWA solo albums are you most proud of?
I know it’s a cliche, but I did ’em, I put ’em out, so I’m proud of all of them. They’re all somewhat time capsules of the era and how me and my community was feeling about certain things. When you hang a picture on the wall, and you an artist, you don’t care what people think when they walk past ’cause you’re gone, and you’re doing your next piece.

What is your favourite beat you ever rapped on and who produced it?
Natural Born Killaz by Dr Dre. It’s just everything I love in a beat: it’s dynamic, it’s thick, it’s terrifying. It fitted my style like a glove. When I first heard it, I just went crazy. He said: “You wanna be on this?” I never wanted to rap on something so bad.

No Vaseline [on which Ice Cube disses his former group NWA] has to be one of the most notorious “diss” tracks of all time. Do you wince now with the benefit of hindsight?
No Vaseline is hands down the greatest diss song in rap history. Because you got one MC taking out four guys and the manager. To me, it’s what a diss song is supposed to be: go for the jugular. You can’t play when you dissing somebody, so I don’t cringe. I don’t flow with society cherrypicking what it wants to be outraged about. I think people should say what they mean, mean what they say, and not censor themselves. I love that song, it’s a time capsule of 1991, so it is what it is.

Is popular culture as interesting and important now as it was pre-internet and streaming?
Yeah. Most people jump up and get on their device and wanna see what’s happening in the world – what did they miss overnight? They’re looking at that before they looking at what’s going on in their own life. So, pop culture is as popular as ever because the world is at everybody’s fingertips. That being said, physical is always gonna be better than digital. When you have to physically go out and buy music – wait for the record to come out, get in your car, go to the record store, stand in line, buy it, either play it in your car or wait til you get home – you cherish this thing. So, that’s what happens when everybody wants to move to the digital world: you lose value because physical things have value, and digital things really don’t.

How did you resolve the dispute with [upcoming tour partners] Cypress Hill after they had recorded No Rest for the Wicked?
We realised that it was getting out of hand – we didn’t want to be causing more bloodshed in the streets. We just got on the phone and decided, man, there was a misunderstanding, let’s just squash it right here, so nobody gets hurt. It was close to getting physical. We have long, cool conversations now, we hang out, we tour together. Even after No Vaseline, I love all the NWA, we did some crazy things together, we made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together. Hopefully, it shows people that’s beefin’ that, if you just put your pride aside and you think about preventing somebody from getting hurt or killed, it’s the right thing to do to try to squash it.

Do you still consider yourself a Trump supporter?
I’ve never been a Trump supporter, so no, I don’t consider myself a Trump supporter. I don’t support none of these people that runs for office.

Why do so many rappers make good actors?
Rappers are very observant. We can observe people better than others, enough to make songs that connect with the same people that we are around.

Looking back at Straight Outta Compton [the 2015 biopic], are you happy with it as a representation of your lives or do you feel it was a bit of a hagiography?
A what-ography? I mean, I produced the movie, so I was happy with it. You’re trying to show 10 years in two and a half hours – you’re not gonna get everything in there. And it has to play out in a dramatic fashion, it’s a movie. I think we did an excellent job because it’s not just a movie about rap, it’s about friendship, about breakup to make up, about David v Goliath. It does show blemishes – it’s not a love story. We showed Eazy-E die in the movie. We did an excellent job showing everything NWA had to go through. People should be happy with what they got, and if not – do their own version.

Did it surprise you that Derek Chauvin [the former Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd] was convicted? Does it give you hope for police reform in the future?
It wasn’t really surprising because I’ve seen police officers convicted. They had to do it because of all the shit he caused – he caused a lot of damage with that move right there. He deserved to pay, he shouldn’t have did it; he should’ve had some humanity instead of being a demon for the beast. George Floyd’s dead so that’s still not justice to me. He’s still got a price to pay at some point in time for what he did. Whether justice comes in a lifetime or not, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, I believe justice will be served.

In 1992, “No barkin’ from the dog, no smog, and Momma cooked a breakfast with no hog” were a few of the things that constituted a good day for you. What in 2023 makes your days good?
A peaceful day. A day where nothing happens. Me, my family and friends – people I care about. Eating, talking, laughing, playing music, watching the game or fight on TV. Just enjoying each other’s company, telling stories about the past. Nothing abnormal; dancing, partying. A good time with people you love, where you don’t have to worry about nothing going wrong.

Ice Cube tours the UK and Ireland in December, alongside Cypress Hill and the Game