The Brag

Ice Cube
Straight Outta Compton
By Hugh Robertson

There are few careers that have been so bewildering to the public eye as that of O’Shea Jackson. At the same time as starring in banal family comedies like Are We Done Yet? and his latest, The Lottery Ticket, Jackson has also played part in far more weighty matter – films like Three Kings, Barbershop and Boyz In The Hood. And through all of that, he’s simultaneously existed as Ice Cube. The hip hop career began in the mid-80s, when a seventeen-year-old Jackson started performing at parties hosted by Andre ‘Dr Dre’ Young. As Ice Cube, and a member of California’s iconic N.W.A, Jackson has been perhaps the standard-bearer for the aggressive, hyper-masculine world of gangsta rap.

It’s a fascinating dichotomy. If few actors can survive a public life that’s even remotely ‘anti-family’, even fewer rappers have been able to do anything without ‘realness’; that appearance of living the lifestyle you rap about. Yet as the first superstars of hip-hop enter their middle age, their followers seem more forgiving of the rhymes they continue to write – based around a lifestyle that they haven’t lived for many, many years. Outside of being a successful actor, for instance, Jackson’s been married to the same woman since 1992, and they have four children together.

It’s certainly a world away from ‘Fuck Tha Police’, a record so visceral in its rage that the members of N.W.A. were rumoured to be on the L.A.P.D’s ‘Most Wanted’ list for a time. Jackson never goes quite so far as to say he was simply acting the part of a militant, disaffected Compton teenager – he suggests instead that both his goofy mugging for the cameras in AWTY?, and lyrics like “Today was a good day / Didn’t even have to use my AK”, come from different aspects of his own personality. “I don’t really consider myself a persona. I just be me,” he tells me. “And people didn’t realise that when I was doing N.W.A … that I could still laugh with the best of them.”

Jackson suggests tracking his essential self through his solo records, on which “you kind of get to be yourself”. And indeed, the Ice Cube oeuvre is all of a type – full of macho swagger and a reductive worldview that prioritises violence over almost everything. It’s unquestionably badass, and Cube is a damn fine MC – even when you see a rhyme coming, he can still shock you with the sheer intensity of his delivery. “Those records are… thorny”, he says, enjoying the sound of the word. “That’s what they’re made to be.”

The recording business has changed profoundly since Jackson got in the game, and he has a fairly bleak view of the current climate – which he talks about with an air of resignation. “These days, getting an album is damn near like getting a soda out of the refrigerator,” he says, ruefully. “It’s anti-climactic. I remember when people used to skip work, or skip school, and they were standing in line at the record stores – and it was an event to get a new record.” I suggest that albums leaking before their release date certainly can’t help – and it’s something that seems to especially occur in hip hop with alarming frequency. “Yeah,” he agrees, “and that hurts. But… the biggest problem in the industry is the fact that people think music is free. And music is becoming worthless.”

There have been countless models and theories floated to counteract the falling value of the music industry, but Jackson’s own approach catches me by surprise. “You gotta stick with your true fans and just satisfy them, because those are the ones that are going to come to the show. So I don’t concern myself with hip hop fans no more; I concern myself with Ice Cube fans. And I do records for Ice Cube fans. And as long as they satisfied, I’m satisfied.”

Ice Cube’s most recent record, I Am The West, was released just a month ago – and Jackson is coming to Sydney this week to show it off live. As with any artist with a back-catalogue like his, he assures me that there’s going to be plenty of old stuff too, for those rusted-on Ice Cube fans. It’s going to be “that hardcore hip-hop”, declares Jackson. “No band. Two turntables. Me and my man Dub C. And then 20 years of hip-hop, from Straight Outta Compton to I Am The West, and everything in between.”

Hip-hop has always been a young man’s game, but at 41, Jackson’s still going. He tells me it’s nothing new. “I mean, you don’t want Mick Jagger to stop, so why the fuck should Ice Cube? If Paul McCartney don’t have to stop, why does Dr. Dre? So, it’s basically, yeah, you’re right… But you still have fans from back in the day who are now in their 50s or 60s. They are still B-boys. They aren’t giving it up.

“And you run into Afrika Bambaataa, and see what he talking about. Y’know what I mean? He talkin’ bout hip-hop, and some B-boy shit – but with grey hair coming out,” he laughs. “Retirement is something that old men do, and I’m a young man.”

Who: Ice Cube
What: I Am The West is out now
Where: Big Top, Luna Park
When: Friday October 22
More: Fat As Butter Festival, October 23 in Newcastle