Ice Cube: S/D

"You can New Jack Swing on my nuts" is still one of my favorite Cube one-liners. that and "you shoulda put a sock on the pickle, then your pussy wouldn't be blowin' smoke signals"....

"When Will They Shoot?" is my favorite Ice Cube, and just might be the angriest song I've heard.

- Belldog, Monday, January 7, 2008 6:52 PM

best Queen sample ever

― Shakey Mo Collier

So, so OTM. Side One of "Predator" is my favourite "side" of rap ever. (I don't even mind the two filler bits)

YOU MISSED! It didn't hit the Lench Mob eitha! Guerillas in the mist, without jungle fever....

so much going on in When Will They Shoot - Club Nouveau, Queen, X-Clan, + probably more I don't recognize - one of the loudest, densest, angriest hip hop tracks. easily rivals (and maybe tops?) the best of the Bomb Squad

Behind the Music episode was lol

hadn't heard the story about him taking a bat to the Priority Records office before - the exec's "all in good fun!" response was hilarious

I'm seeing him live in London next week; not sure what it'll be like at this point. Naughty by Nature is the opening act!

I've heard live he's pretty much the same as he's ever been, does a lot of old shit, etc

Glad to hear that. I saw him in '92 and '96, but haven't even heard the last couple albums.

Saw him in 1990 with Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane--he blew everyone else away.

not sure what it'll be like at this point. Naughty by Nature is the opening act!

when I saw him in '93 the support was Fu-Schnickens with Shaq

fwiw naughty by nature were awesome live when i saw them

With a catalog of singles that deep they probably do tear shit up

Naughty by Nature were indeed fun. I found it slightly depressing that they kept shouting "who loves '90s hip hop?!" throughout the set; and the DJ kept launching into snippets of other big 90s tunes ("Jump Around," etc.) that the audience ate up. I know it's par for the course at these things these days, but I always laugh at the lengthy roll call of "Follow @triggertreach on Twitter... check out our Facebook page..." They did a bunch of songs I forgot all about (e.g. "Guard Your Grill") and a couple of new ones that were actually pretty decent.

Cube had insane energy, and used his sideman (W.C.) to great advantage. I found the set-list to be kind of a bummer, though. No songs from Amerikkka's Most Wanted; no songs from Death Certificate; 1 song from The Predator; 1 song from Lethal Injection. It guess he always does "Straight Outta Compton" and "Gangsta Gangsta," which is fun, but I wouldn't have minded fewer of the NEW-new ones - the rest of the set was from I Am the West, Raw Footage, and Laugh Now Cry Later. He did lots of his Westside Connection/collaborative songs ("Bow Down," Gangsta Nation," "Natural Born Killaz"), which were good. There were just long stretches of 5 or 6 songs at a time that I wasn't terribly familiar with and I kept wishing he would throw in even a "Steady Mobbin'" or a "Jackin' for Beats" or something.

The venue (Indigo2) was maybe slightly less than 2/3 full, and the crowd as genuinely probably the most diverse crowd I have ever seen for any show ever.

That's interesting about the crowd. When I saw him in Brixton on the Predator tour, it was 95% black. I guess that's what happens in hip hop: as rappers get older the crowd gets whiter. I'm going to see Public Enemy do Fear of a Black Planet in September and it sure as hell isn't going to look like a black planet inside the Kentish Town Forum.

Ha - yeah, there was even a contingent of kind of mook-metal dudes (and I thought I might have seen the first Juggalo I have ever seen in the UK).

Oh - the other thing about the set I forgot to mention is that he performed a couple of tracks with his son, who goes by the name Doughboy. He's got to be at least 18. Cube still looks so young; I think a lot of people were suprised when the kid was introduced. He was perfectly fine, though I heard him pull at least one use of "grocery bag" - something along the lines of "We smoke trees.... CHRISTMAS!"

I found it slightly depressing that they kept shouting "who loves '90s hip hop?!" throughout the set; and the DJ kept launching into snippets of other big 90s tunes ("Jump Around," etc.) that the audience ate up.

best version of this: Biz Markie the other week doing a Nate Dogg song in tribute and not knowing the words so blah-de-blahing half of it

worst version: Shawn Wigs getting a solo spot in the middle of the Ghostface show, and doing a 90s medley and not doing Pokerface or Greedy Bitches at all

Cube had insane energy, and used his sideman (W.C.) to great advantage.

lol at explanatory parenthetical

as rappers get older the crowd gets whiter. I'm going to see Public Enemy do Fear of a Black Planet in September

saw them on the Fear 20th and Nation 20ths, and the crowd was maaaad azn both times.

warning though: they don't actually play Fear

Wait, why were you laughing out loud at the W.C. thing - is it just a given that he is the sideman? The other times I'd seen Cube (both early 90s) he wasn't there. Oh, also, W.C. used the show to debut a couple of tracks off of his new album, which I think he referred to as "Revenge of the Barracuda." Maybe it was "Return."

yeah, I thought it was a given!

WC has made some awesome music w/o cube

worst version: Shawn Wigs getting a solo spot in the middle of the Ghostface show, and doing a 90s medley and not doing Pokerface or Greedy Bitches at all

haha this is so WTF. Greed Bitches is a great song

WC and The Maad Circle's "Ain't A Damn Thing Change" is classic btw

Biz Markie the other week doing a Nate Dogg song in tribute and not knowing the words so blah-de-blahing half of it

Cube did a Nate Dogg tribute as well, though it just consisted of some of his songs being played and Cube saying "wish you were here with us."

Naughty by Nature did a Tupac tribute: Treach took out a bottle of Courvoisier, took several swigs from it, then poured some of it on a tattoo of Tupac that he had on his arm. The DJ played some Tupac songs, and Treach was shouting "When I ride in London, you ride in London" to the tattoo.

They also covered the first couple verses of "La-Di-Da-Di" as a tribute to the UK's role in rap history. Treach also unleashed a Dick-Van-Dyke-goes-gangsta accent whilst hyping the crowd.

You Can Do It is one of the very few rap singles that is actually improved by the censorship. "I can do it put your *spank!* into it! I can do it put your *Uhh* into it!".

haha i wish i could have seen that naughty set!

Just when I think the internet has done more harm than good...

http://murkavenue.tumblr.com/post/16553509655/i-found-ice-cubes-good-day

erm check SNA mang

Not such a good day for these folks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1IwGn-BT7E

weird that I have never even heard of (much less heard) this Kam album before (ie Neva Again)

it's great!

this is pretty awesome
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140121151550-01-ice-cube-goodyear-story-top.jpg
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/21/showbiz/ice-cube-good-day/

Does it say "Ice Cube's A Pimp?"
If not, it's not a good day, not really.

no, Goodyear wouldn't go for it

Never change Cube

http://escobar300.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/icecube_amerikkka_101b.jpg 1990

http://i2.cdnds.net/13/51/300x225/movies-ride-along-trailer-still.jpg 2014

haha this is p good actually
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqiwDSm-rfw

this sounds exactly like every single record he has made since 1998

that's true

but the lyrics are better

nice

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Certificate-Explicit-25th-Anniversary/dp/B0723D7YG5

so i guess he added new songs to Death Certificate 25th anniversary and put them at the BEGINNING?

doing dumb shit

Did you know the new white was orange?!

piercing

guess he added new songs to Death Certificate 25th anniversary and put them at the BEGINNING?

100% endorse this, it means you can play the album as intended / don’t have a bunch of castoffs ruining the climax of No Vaseline

like, the 12th anniversary remaster tacks jaunty nigh-comedy bouncer How To Survive In South Central onto the end

a bunch of castoffs

idgi wtf are those tracks? they sure aren't DC outtakes from the sound of them

oh right, I was assuming they were songs too bad to include the first time around, but they're new songs from 2017. This one was a "single" from the reissue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSKRLZSzCXA

decided to listen to "Arrest the President" to see if he was more inspired on Everythang's Corrupt now that Trump is here. some reviews said it was a 'return to form'. nope.

Ugh. this is BAD. the beat is terrible, like something a kid in 2006 made after watching Peter Gunn. I just remember how fired up he used to sound on his most passionate pieces on his old albums, but he sounds like he's checking his FB feed while he raps. I used

Not only is his flow lazy, but thematically, this song is all over the place, loosely connected gripes with no focus, no quotables. The song is called Arrest the President, but DJT is barely referenced in the song.

"Close your fuckin' eyes like it's day care".
"they treat it like a trap house/these motherfuckers never take the trash out"
"Homie you play too much/these devils say too much"

God this is bad.

https://youtu.be/y9oUnC8JtXY

AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Death Certificate
The Predator
Lethal Injection

These are all total classics. I listen to The Predator more often because musically it's his best record, just exploding out of the speakers, though I think Death Certificate is his best album lyrically.

He lost me with the War & Peace records that were just too disjointed and not as much fun, but he lost me before that. I remember the single before that came out, "We Be Clubbin'" from some soundtrack, a really good friend of mine - he and I made up 40% of the white people to see Ice Cube play the Apollo when he had an off-day from Lollapalooza (almost identical sets but the Apollo show was longer and he smiled a lot more at Lolla) - he told me how bummed he was.

"He's not even talking about clubbing white people," he sighed. "It's about dancing."

Yea the Peace disc is the only one of War and Peace i heard. Hated it. He'd given up by then.

Laugh Now, Cry Later's only redeeming quality was my mother coming in while the chorus "You want child support? GET IT OUT MY ASS, BITCH!" overvand over and her bursting into laughter

AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Death Certificate
The Predator
Lethal Injection

These are all total classics. I listen to The Predator more often because musically it's his best record, just exploding out of the speakers, though I think Death Certificate is his best album lyrically.

He lost me with the War & Peace records that were just too disjointed and not as much fun, but he lost me before that. I remember the single before that came out, "We Be Clubbin'" from some soundtrack, a really good friend of mine - he and I made up 40% of the white people to see Ice Cube play the Apollo when he had an off-day from Lollapalooza (almost identical sets but the Apollo show was longer and he smiled a lot more at Lolla) - he told me how bummed he was.

"He's not even talking about clubbing white people," he sighed. "It's about dancing."

it's definitely a classic

Lethal Injection is the falloff imo, hits the one-note aggressive lyrics and swingless, dry beats of his later albums right out of the gate, just without being as bad as them. Bop Gun is OK but it's at the level of like a thrown-together new single on a best-of, not an album standout from the guy who'd been the best songwriter in the world for a few years recently.

i have the temptation to check out those war and peace albums. was listening to natural born killers recently and while its plain ridiculous, its a lot of fun, and high entertainment (the beat is also brilliant). also heard that verse he did on lil jons crunk juice, which is even more OTT. maybe pantomime cube is due for a reappraisal.

After Lethal Injection (which only has a few cuts I still listen to), "Ghetto Vet" is probably the only cut that I'd play again. I find the production on his "later" records disappointing compared to the earlier stuff, but "Ghetto Vet" is pretty damm good.

The Predator isn't his best, but it's the one I always have a soft spot for since the summer in high school when I went to a week long architectural camp at Ball State, for which I remembered to pack my Walkman but somehow no tapes. There was a tiny rack of cassettes in a little student book shop and I picked this one up to get me through the week.

can't believe the guy who was so racist that the UK straight-up left songs off his album in 1991 said dumb racist stuff in 2020, a solid two decades after he last made a good record

LOL

Re: The Predator, like Lethal Injection there's only a few cuts that I really like, but one of them is "It Was a Good Day" and I fucking love it, both the album version and the single remix that samples the Staple Singers - both are great and they may very well be my favorite recordings from Ice Cube.

Original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcF2KUJVdLE

Single remix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS8LUDKAKNQ

His debut AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, the Kill at Will EP, the UK version of Death Certificate (I have no use for the shit they took off) are great - I still have them. The other stuff I mentioned I usually listen to via compilations.

death certificate cube is best cube.