If the riots taught us anything, it is that we all have to think in terms of total community if the conditions that contribute to the rage in Ice Cube’s music are to be corrected. But he is one of the most compelling artists in all of pop music-and he should should think in terms of that larger community. Ice Cube has always said that his main interest as a record-maker is to speak to his own community-the hard-core rap audience. Without abandoning the hard-core rap emphasis of the past, he adds exciting musical color, including enough horns and backing voices for the album to serve in places as a rap summit between George Clinton and Sly Stone.īy failing to deal more directly with the events of last spring, however, Ice Cube has not taken advantage of an opportunity to speak more openly to the non-rap fans who may turn to the album in a genuine attempt to better understand the angry young black viewpoint. Ice Cube’s biggest step forward in the album is in the music. Against the complaint that he is also sexist, he snaps:Ī black woman is my manager / Not in the kitchen /So will you please stop bitchin’.
He also spends considerable time defending himself against criticism leveled at his last album, including charges that he is anti-Semitic and anti-Korean. Today was a good day.Įlsewhere, however, Ice Cube spends too much time recycling attitudes and images that have been documented in hard-core rap-tales of tough-guy bravado and more rantings against the misbehavior of bitches and “ho’s.” Nobody I know got killed in South-Central L.A.
In the song, he wakes up to find everything going right, from no smog in the sky to a police car that rolls through the intersection without hassling him. “It Was a Good Day” still requires a parental warning sticker for its sexy language, but there is a tenderness in the song that is rare in hard-core rap, and it helps humanize Ice Cube. The fury of these tunes is softened briefly by one of the warmest selections Ice Cube has recorded. It is accompanied by two more biting exercises-"Who Got the Camera,” a tale of Ice Cube getting caught in a King-like situation and looking around in vain for a video-camera operator to document it, and “We Had to Tear This (expletive) Up,” a revenge fantasy about going to Simi Valley after the King decision to hunt down a juror and two of the acquitted policemen.
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