Kill At Will (1991)
The track “Jackin’ For Beats” was my idea. In 1990, everybody’s beats were crazy from D-Nice and Digital Underground to P.E. and EPMD…everybody’s beat was damn near better than the next! So I was like, ‘Man, I wish I could rap on all this shit that’s out right now. And then I thought about it: why can’t I? I got with Chilly Chill and started building the record. But Chilly could only take it so far, so then I had Jinx to come in and put the finishing touches on it. All of the songs on “Jackin’ For Beats” got cleared, but when you do something as ambitious as that it can get pretty expensive. D-Nice had sampled “Call Me D-Nice from somebody, so we ended up having to pay D-Nice and the person he sampled from. Now just imagine having eight or nine different people’s songs in an actual track like that. That’s why I didn’t do a “Jackin’ For Beats 2” because that song was just way too expensive. It didn’t make good business sense to do a song like that [laughs]. I was moved to write “Dead Homiez” because one of my homies named T-Bone got smoked and he was a good dude. That whole thing fucked me up. I wrote that song in one hour because I was just feeling it. Jinx had this slow ass beat that I didn’t know what to do with, but it was perfect for “Dead Homiez.” Around the same time I started filming Boyz In The Hood. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even interested in acting or the movies. I had never been to acting school. I was like, ‘Who would want to put me in a movie?’ I met John Singleton around the same time when I was upset with Arsenio Hall because he had 2 Live Crew on his show, but never let N.W.A . come on. And that show was taped right in L.A.! So John walks up to me and he’s like, ‘Hey, you’re Ice Cube from N.W.A.’ He told me he was going to USC and writing a movie and he wanted me in it. I was like, ‘Yeah right.’ I just blew him off, but I kept running into him. I ran into him at a P.E. concert. I saw him at a Farrakhan event.
John kept telling me the same thing. When I read the script, I took him seriously, but I was wack at my [screen test]. John was like, ‘Okay, I’ll give you another shot, but if you are wack again I’m going to get somebody else.’ So I took it seriously after that. Boyz In The Hood was very real. It was like, ‘Damn, this movie is actually about how we grew up. They are making a movie about this shit?’ I couldn’t believe it. Most people come into the movie game with cameo roles. But they usually don’t get something as powerful as a role like Doughboy. By me playing that role and being able to deliver on it I think people took me seriously as an actor. To this day, Boyz In The Hood made it possible for me to have a film career.
Death Certificate (1991)
Working with Public Enemy you can’t help but learn about who you are. After spending time with them, I started getting into the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I started getting his point of view of what was going on with us in America; why we were in the condition that we were in. And I was really angry about it because I felt like we were being sabotaged in America. To this day, there’s still sabotage going on. But at that time, I was really ferocious, so I felt the best thing I could do is put that anger in rhyme form. I came up with the concept for the album cover. What the dead white body covered in the American flag represented was old ideas. Ideas of what a country should be. You have to kill that shit and start anew. There’s a lot that’s great things about America, but we have a long way to go. I thought that was the best way to get that point across. I don’t have any regrets with recording “Black Korea.” I think in life you should only regret what you don’t do. But the song was as ugly as the situation was. When that girl Latasha [Harlins] was shot in the head, that was crazy. (On March 16, 1991, a defenseless Harlins was shot and killed by an L.A. Korean-store owner who accused the 15-year-old of stealing a bottle of orange juice. The incident gained worldwide attention and drew outrage from the black community. In response, Cube wrote the scathing “Black Korea,” a controversial song that some critics denounced as racist.) This was done even before the LA riots. “Black Korea” was a song that was trying to speak out at our frustration with our relationship with Koreans.
To me the best thing to do is to be honest about it and not pussy foot around it, especially in a rap song. You can pussy foot around it in an interview, but in a rap song you have to go all out and give the true pulse of what you are feeling. So I don’t have any regrets. If I hurt anybody’s feelings, I’m sorry about that. But there are people out there who felt a lot harsher than that record.
The Predator (1992)
The Predator record was a change of pace for me. Songs like “It Was A Good Day” were less political because we had been so political to the point where people didn’t even think I could rap anymore. People didn’t think I was an MC! They were trying to turn me into some political figure. And I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, hold on…we are doing music. I’m just injecting what I feel is the truth in my music.’ So I wanted to get back to the music. And then in another way I felt Damn, we can’t get a song in rotation, but the [non-political] form of gangsta rap was getting played all day. I knew there was a difference. The music I was making was institutionalized-breaking shit. The shit that me, Public Enemy, Ice T, and KRS-One were doing was not the status quo. We were making highly charged political arena shit. So, if I was MTV or any of the radio stations, I would make it my business to get us off of that political tip. And if I was a fan I would think, Man, President Clinton is in office. It’s time to party. No more Reaganomics…it’s time to let loose, man! Let’s hit the club…let’s get some weed, get a car, and get some pussy like Bill. Fuck all that political shit. We won. That’s when escapism rap became the standard. It was time to indulge.
I decided to use the track from [Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s] “The Message” for “Check Yo Self.” Those beats back then, even the shit Whodini was doing, that wasn’t sampling. Those were motherfuckers in the studio making real music. Every time I heard the music for “The Message” it made me feel a certain way. It made me feel like I had to do a hip-hop B-boy rhyme off that. I had released “Jackin’ For Beats,” but this time I wanted to push the envelope. Instead of sampling R&B, jazz and rock all the time, let’s sample hip-hop too. But thinking back, the whole gangsta rap style of the early ‘90s kicked off the Mafioso style that Biggie and them were doing. After that was the ice age with Cash Money. Now we are in the 2000’s with the same escapism shit.
Last edited:
