60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “It Was a Good Day”—Ice Cube

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Rob dives into the world of N.W.A. and gangsta rap, looking back at Ice Cube’s more peaceful hit, “It Was A Good Day.” Along the way, he finds time to reminisce on his life as an RA in college. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Van Lathan Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Productional Support: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushna, a lifelong musician and composer. Each season of Dissect dives deep into a single album, forensically dissecting the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. Our newest season is covering Tyler the creator's Igor, a beautifully honest album in which Tyler explores love, communication, masculinity, and truth. Listen to Dissect today only on Spotify, because great art deserves more than a swipe. I ever tell you guys about the time my freshman year of college when I personally started a riot by playing the Afghan wigs on our student radio station?

That is absolutely not what happened. But that's what I say happened. And at this point, what's the difference? That song is called Honkies Ladder from the very excellent 1996. Afghan Whigs album, Black Love. The Afghan Wigs, fantastic Scuzzball soul rockers from Cincinnati, Ohio. Proto indie Slees. You know Cincinnati Chili, Skyline Chili, the quite polarizing regional food stuff?

It's bean forward with a mountain of shredded cheese. You put it on spaghetti. Deadspin once referred to it as horrifying diarrhea sludge. That was rude. That was excessive. It's fundamentally grody and unnatural and ill-advised, but taste divine when you're super drunk. The Afghan wigs are like that, minus the sludge part. I love them.

Just to compound the falsehoods here, I would not have played honky's ladder on the air at my college radio station. Do, of course, to the 20-pound swear words, lest we incur the wrath of the FCC or whatever. I forget why we couldn't cuss on the air. Exactly, gentlemen. Perhaps I started a campus riot by playing the title track to the even more excellent 1993 Afghan wigs album, Gentlemen. Greg Dooley, the front man for the Afghan wigs. Greg's voice is somewhat of an acquired taste that I insist that you acquire. I love him.

Greg Dooley's voice is an erotically erupting volcano of shredded cheese. His voice is bean forward. I will not elaborate on that. I'm going to listen to so much Afghan wigs when I'm done with this. It is Sunday, April 6th, 1997. I can tell you the exact date because I can look up when daylight, savings time occurred in the spring of 1997, Saturday night into Sunday morning, spring forward. Yes, I speak of the fable time change riot, an absolutely real event that occurred at my bucolic and semi-reputable Midwestern university.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned at some point where I went to college. I'm not ashamed. I'm not trying to be evasive about this. I'm on fucking LinkedIn for all the good that does anybody. but on the off chance that this is being overheard by some big shot school administrator with the power to revoke my diploma, I'm being evasive. At 155 a.m. on Sunday, April 6th, 1997, on the charmingly rustic and bar-lined main drag of an unnamed bucolic Midwestern university, those bars close an hour early because at 2 a.m. daylight savings time kicks in and now it's 3 a.m. and it's illegal for those bars to still be open. The rowdy denizens of those bars, primarily college students, primarily fraternity and sorority types,

thereby lose a full hour of drinking and perforce are unceremoniously cast out into the street whereupon they proceed to, quote, unquote, riot. They light trash cans on fire. They dance on cars. They hang out second-story windows if they're lucky enough to rent those rad apartments. They throw bottles and pool balls and eggs and road flares and whatnot. A cop gets conked in the head with a whiskey bottle. Eventually, 70 cops converge on the scene and clear the street at 4 a.m.

by firing knee-knocker bullets into the crowd. 47 people get arrested. Some future media mogul with a 1997-ass camcorder films the action and sends the footage to CNN. And voila, time change riot. And what was I up to, you ask, at 155 a.m. When all this vaguely humiliating carnage kicked off, I was lighting the fucking fuse. Going to town. A much radio-friendlyer cut from the very excellent 1996 Afghan Wigs album Black Love.

Fact, I was DJing. I was on the air at the student radio station when the shit popped off. Or shortly before the shit popped off. Actually, I had either the 9 p.m. to midnight shift or the midnight to 2 a.m. shift. I don't remember. Either way, I finished DJing, left the station, walked home, went to bed, and didn't hear about the riot until breakfast the next morning. An uninteresting man in interesting times. Nor do I explicitly remember playing the Afghan wigs that night. But I've been telling people that I started the time change riot by playing the Afghan wigs for so long that I assumed that back when I started telling people that, then I remembered playing the Afghan wigs that. Wigs. You know what I'm saying? Print the legend. Fact. Nobody was listening to me on the air at the student radio station the night of the time change riot. No offense to me or the radio station. ACRN, Athens only alternative. It was Ohio University. It's exhausting being evasive. Oh, you, not Ohio State, the Ohio State, the other one. A Ohio University and Ohio University.

Okay, in Camcorder era asked 1997, one could only listen to ACRN via cable radio. You know, somehow connect your radio to your TV. Don't ask me. My buddy Todd hooked it up in my freshman dorm room shortly before he stole my girlfriend. I think I've got that timeline straight. I shouldn't presume nobody had cable radio. Certainly the bars did not bother with cable radio. I was talking to myself that night.

I was practicing for now. I remember vividly the all-station ACRN meeting where our GM was like, we're going to try a new thing called web radio. And everyone went, we were all like, that's not a thing. That's not going to work. And it didn't.

Whatever web radio company we used, they mailed us a giant 1997-ass computer CPU, like a microwave-sized brick. And it didn't work. And we mailed it back and asked them to fix it, which only pissed them off. So they just whacked the CPU with a hammer a bunch of times. and then mailed it back to us.

That's how I remember it. I will not be fact-checking any part of that anecdote. I'm busy. The Ohio University Time Change Riot of 1997 made the news. National News. CNN, etc. It made the front page of my hometown newspaper three and a half hours away. A giant front page photo of not drunk enough knuckleheads cavorting amidst burning trash cans.

My mom calls me Monday morning. like, so, how's it going? How's your weekend? For several years afterward, until the early 2000s, oh, you had quote unquote time change riots every spring because now the media is on it. Now TV news trucks show up in advance for the anniversary. Now everyone shows up just to see what's going to happen. Even I showed up in 1998. You know how you know a meme is over when like Chipotle's Twitter account starts using it? That was me appearing in public somewhere. Yeah, now the time change ride is a whole deal. It's tradition.

And see, we're big on knuckleheaded traditions at Ohio University. Halloween was historically a big whoop at OU. A legendary weekend-long Bacchanal. Knuckleheads from all over the Midwest converged on Athens, Ohio for Halloween. A lot of incoming freshmen don't know jack shit about Ohio University other than Halloween is awesome here. Just a giant, endless, mega-drunk, elaborately costume parade. down the charmingly rustic and bar-lined main drag of our town. I was there.

I saw some shit. On Halloween weekend, I once happened to witness the jolly green giant getting arrested. I'm sorry. Oh, no, I shouldn't laugh. He just looks so sad. He's very tall.

He's dressed all in green, but now he's all disheated. Shevelled and wasted looking, his green shirts untucked, and he's just staring down at his feet with his hands cuffed behind his back and like six cops are standing around like, I hate this job. It was a very grim tableau. And I just happened to be sitting there on a park bench eating a burrito or whatever, like, ah, tough break, jelly green giants. Get him next time. He's fine. He's fine.

He turned out fine. He's a senator now. Perhaps a state senator. in my dorm sophomore year, standing basically in the doorway of my dorm room, I once witnessed, and this is gross, I'm sorry, but didn't seem gross at the time. I once witnessed a mega drunk guy

puking while walking down the stairs, just casually walking down the stairs, like, blah, nonchalant, oblivious, not acknowledging the puking in any way, not even turning his head, such a fluid motion, graceful, even. It was mesmerizing.

Like if Fred Astaire had ever, puked while walking down the stairs in a movie, it would have looked like that. I was in fact so mesmerized that it took me forever to even register what I was looking at. The puking guy walks down the stairs and out the door and he's long gone. And 30 seconds later, I'm like, yo, you know what would be a great Afghan wigsaw on to play for a guy puking while walking down a flight of stairs in a Midwestern college dormitory white trash party? I should have done something about puking stairs guy probably because at that point i'm an r a residence assistant i was an authority figure i was so lame i was supposed to bust people you know write up people for excessive noise or drinking

or puking i didn't do that part of the job straight up i'm conflict diverse i wrote up one guy in two years and he almost peed on me out his third story dorm room window i already told that story they really are going to revoke my diploma for talking all this mess about where I went to college. Forget where I went to college. This is terrible. So RAs go through a rigorous week-long training process. You get to school a week early. You sit through meetings. You role play writing people up. Other RAs pretend to be drunk students so you can practice busting them. I was terrible at that. I am averse to participating in staged conflict as well. But at night you're just sitting there in your dorm room alone nobody's moved in yet nobody else on your whole floor ain't nobody to write up so the r aes tended to hang out together so one night i'm hanging out in a fellow r as room let's call him jake just the two of us we're playing cards jake and i we're playing gin rummy i believe nothing fancy we're also drinking underage hiding our natty lights or whatever in a trash can when we hear our boss walking down the hall that was jake's idea but i was into it so sneaky

dipshits. When she ducked her head in the room to say, hey, I'm fairly certain our boss knew we were drinking underage, but I could see the thought bubble over her head in which she decided she didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of firing and replacing us. Also, Jake is playing me some music on his little boombox. Jake is showing off his CD collection. Jake is playing me his favorite song. He plays it several times. I remember it well. I remember it too well. Jake's favorite song is called Giving Up the Nappy Dugout. That's what it's called. It is called that because that is what Ice Cube called it. Given Up the Nappy Dugout. From the Los Angeles rapper Ice Cube's second full-length solo album, 1991's Death Certificate. This song is quite crude.

I am aware of that. This song is entirely composed of crude remarks. I do not condone these crude remarks, but for the purpose of punching up this fairly mundane anecdote, here are Ice Cube's top three crudest remarks in the song Giving Up the Napi Dugout. Here we go. Number three.

Song clips do not equal endorsements. Number two. Drink it up, drink it up, even though she's Catholic, that don't mean shit, because she's giving up the asses. My mom's going to call me up and be like, so, this is your job now, huh? That's fascinating. Number one. You should hear how she sounds with a cock and her boobs getting night for me to Czechoslovakia.

The duality of Ice Cube, unfathomably crude and yet also technically gifted enough to concocte rhyme for Czechoslovakia. None of those lines, though, are Jake's favorite line in the song, giving up the nappy dugout. Here now is my new RA friend Jake's favorite line. You know how I know that that's Jake's favorite line? I know that because Jake wrapped that line to me, acapella, several times. He'd be like, dude, you hear when you said,

and then he'd wrap it. This is a voice in my head. To this day, I remember nothing else about this person. He was cool, but I can't tell you a single additional thing about him. I don't recall ever hanging out with him again. And I can still hear him rapping, nympho, nympho, boy is she bad, get her all alone and outcome the knee pads. The precise diction of outcome the knee pads in particular, Jake's vocal fry. I cannot explain my decision to retain this information.

I did not ask for this. But 25 years later, once a month or so while I'm grocery shopping or discussing recent recent trends in romance novels with my wife or otherwise tending to my affairs. It'll just pop into my head unbidden. Jake rapping, not Ice Cube wrapping, Jake wrapping, Jimph, Nimfo, boise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it is my curse. It is one of my curses. It is not a catastrophic, unbearable, generational Dracula type curse. It is simply inconvenient. It is, of no use to me, this memory, unless you count this as a use. I don't wish to remember it. I don't wish to remember that he also played me this song. Our ability on this show to play you clips of

often very popular songs is predicated on the notion that I provide commentary, insight, valuable context. I will not be doing that in this case, beyond telling you that this is the very famous Compton rap group NWA, formerly including Ice Cube, the way to go on solo by this point. And this song is called Just Don't Bite It. I have nothing else to say. Forget it. Forget it. No. What do you want me to do with it? Don't matter. I just don't bite it. I do actually have one little bit of commentary, which is that the year was very amusing to me.

If Jake rapped any part of this song to me, I at least had the good sense to forget that. This also is a grim tableau. Now that I describe it to you, two white, swagless doofuses who are training to be RAs, playing gin and drinking warm, horrendous beer out of a trash can in a drab Midwestern dorm room while listening to and occasionally rapping to one another, cartoonishly uncouth gangster rap that only accentuates their swagless, dofishness. I had an all right time though. I can admit that. I won't say it. It's too corny if I say it, but I think you know what kind of day it was. Wow. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 76th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we are discussing, It Was a Good Day by Ice Cube off his third full-length solo album, The Predator, from 1992.

that was still corny. Saying, I'm not going to say it was a good day because it's corny, and then basically doing it anyway is arguably cornier. Self-awareness of one's cornyness does not negate one's cornyness. Quite the opposite. I have refused to learn this lesson over the course of my lifetime. I wanted to play that it was a good day loop unadorned because it is astoundingly beautiful, a goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song.

And all the more so in the context of an Ice Cube record amid the violence, the debauchery, the contraband, The venomous glee, the pain, the fury, the relentless barrage of crude remarks. God tear sample here. DJ Pooh produced It Was a Good Day, which of course consists in its near entirety of a sample of the 1977 Isley Brothers classic footsteps in the dark. Refamiliarize yourselves. For as long as you've got this loop in your head, your happiness will endure. I guarantee it. DJ Pooh and Ice Cube, by the way, it would later co-star in and also co-write the script for the Blockbuster in 1995 comedy Friday.

These guys work well together. I think it's fair to say. O'Shea Jackson was born in 1969 in Los Angeles between South Central and Englewood. He's the youngest of four. He fell in love with rappers delight by the Sugar Hill gang when he was 10 years old. Back then he was acting too cool for his age in the opinion of his older brother Clyde. And so Clyde gave him a little. O'Shea's new nickname, Ice Cube. Either that or Clyde threatened to toss O'Shea into a freezer until he turned into an ice cube. Print both legends. Young Ice Cube left public enemy and the Beastie Boys and Run DMC, their song Sucka MCs especially. According to the great 2017 book, Parental Discretion is advised, The Rise of NWA and the Dawn of Gangster Rap by journalist and friend of the show, Garrett Kennedy. Ice Cube wrote his first rhymes at 14 as a freshman in high school.

egged on in typing class by a friend named Kiddo. Ice Cube's first bars goal as follows. My name is Ice Cube. I want you to know. I'm not run DMC. I'm not Curtis Blow. You got that right. Young Ice Cube lived in South Central, but he was bused to a much fancier high school.

William Howard Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley. As part of LA's quite belated school desegregation effort, In Garrett Kennedy's book, Cube says that the daily bus ride gave him a chance to see that the world was bigger than Compton. But that in turn also pissed him off. Quote, think about how you felt at that age. I was mad at everything. When I went to the schools in the valley, going through those neighborhoods, seeing how different they were from mine, that angered me. The injustice of it.

That's what always got me. The injustice. End quote. Ice Cube's goal from the onset was to be the full. funniest, crudest, balliest, and angriest rapper you ever heard of. He is all of those things most of the time,

and most of those things, all of the time. Fact, this song is called She's a Skag, released on Epic Records in 1986, and credited to the stereo crew, which ultimately consisted of Ice Cube, the rapper producer Sir Jinks,

and the rapper KD. Fact, Ice Cube is 16, 17 years when this song comes out. Opinion. Ice Cube somehow sounds menacing and charismatic even when he's a yelping teenager. Fact, this song is produced by Sir Jinks's cousin, a guy named Dr. Dre. Fact, on Twitter a couple years back,

Ice Cube confirmed that this was the first song he ever put out, adding, quote, it was whack, but we were just happy to be on wax back then. End quote. Opinion, I agree with the first part of that. That was the chorus, that last line. the hook, if you will. Very catchy. The word scag is a combination of, you know what, forget it. Here's another opinion that gets pretty close in my opinion to being an objective fact.

The misogyny of some of the music we're discussing today is formidable, is overpowering, is justifiably disqualifying, depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing. Ice Cube's music is weathered high profile and frankly credible accusations of racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism as well. He has proven willing to address those accusations at length, but not necessarily apologize. You don't need me to tell you any of this, but I do need to say it. You don't need me weighing on the morality of enjoying music like this. The societal conundrum of separating the greatness from the ugliness and our most revered and enduring popular music, we will not be solving that issue here today.

I'm not smart enough for that shit, dude. I have a bachelor's degree from a school famous for its time change riots. Nor is this issue exclusive to rap music, of course, et cetera. Let's not dwell on all this, but let's not ignore it either. For me, it comes down to how willing you are to be amused by a song called Giving Up the Nappy Dugout. Cards on the table, I thought that song was fucking hilarious when I was, what, 19? And at whatever age I am now, I find it less funny, but more to the point, it's just that I feel progressively worse. for still thinking it's kind of funny.

It's a problem and I'm part of it, but if you listen to pop music at all, you're probably at least a little teeny part of the problem. We're all doing the best we can. Ice Cube is a yelping teenager is also doing the best he can. His claim to fame on the LA club scene at this time is doing X-rated parody raps

of popular songs, Weird Al style. So the Rundee MC song My Adidas becomes my penis. That's funny. I don't mind telling you. I feel less bad about finding that funny. The rapper Joski Love at a song called Pee Wee's Dance about this brand new dance called the Pee Wee Herman. Ice Cube turned that one into VD Sermon.

That's much funnier. Salt and Peppa had that song, I'll Take Your Man. Ice Cube turned it into I'll fuck your friend. That's less clever, but I do appreciate the enthusiasm. The stereo crew changed their name to the crew in action, better known as the CIA. This song is called My Posse. It's from 1987. Dr. Dre is once again producing.

Cube is 17. You ever listen to Ice Cube rap and think, this is cool, but I wish he sounded more like one of the Beastie Boys. This is Ice Cube. He says it's Ice Cube and everything. Kick it. Amazing. That's amazing. Jock, that's a portal into a very disturbing alternate universe. There's some fun stuff happening here and a lot of soon-to-be super famous guys meeting and hanging out and recording together. And I don't mean to minimize this era, but basically everybody's sitting around waiting for. this to happen. And by everybody, I mean all of society. Cruising down the street and my six-four. Jocke in the friece. Clock in the door. Went to the park to get the scoop. Knuckle hairs out there, cold shooting some hoot.

Yes, here we have Boys in the Hood. The 1987 debut single from a gregarious young hustler-turned rapper named EasyE, written by Ice Cube, produced by Dr. Dre, and appearing later that year on the Janky compilation NWA and the Posse. I'm disinclined to get too bogged down in the NWA of it all, in part because NWA, most famously, the lineup of Ice Cube, EZE, Dr. Dre, M.C. Ren, and DJ Yella, long ago became canonized rock stars,

rock stars in the broad cosmic sense. NWA makes every list of the rap groups of all time. their 1988 album straight out of Compton makes every list of the best rap albums of all time Ice Cube wrote most of the lyrics including Fuck the Police which like it or not is on the very short list of the single most consequential rap songs of all time I will try to think of something fresh and insightful to say to you about Fuck the Police but if I did think of something like that I probably would have said it right here instead of saying that I'll try to think of something so apparently I didn't think of anything in 2015 NWA

got a semi-blockbuster biopic, also called Straight Outta Compton. Ice Cube was played by Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., who inherited his father's scowl. There's a scene in the director's cup where EZE and the group's manager slash archivillan Jerry Heller eat Kung Pow Chicken together. That is not necessarily an endorsement of the director's cut. I just thought I'd mention it. I've mentioned that before. NWA were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, and so on. This ground is well-trod. It's tough to find anything fresh and insightful about boys in the hood for that matter. The scene in the movie where Easy E records this song,

holding Ice Cube's lyric sheet with Dr. Dre egging him on and basically turning easy into a superstar rapper in real time, that's the second best scene in the movie after the Kung Pow Chicken thing. It is unfortunately not as vivid to me as my whole giving up the nappy dugout situation, but I can sum it up a memory from high school. I'm like 15, and my good friend Jason one day just starts rap Boys in the Hood to me, a cappella while we're playing TechMobile or whatever.

In suburban Ohio, I should add. To be precise, Jason starts rapping the Boys in the Hood remix from EasyE's solo album Easy Does It. I know that because of a very subtle change in the second line. Cruising down the street in my six-four, jocking the bitches, slapping the holes, went to the park to get the scoop. Knuckleheads out there,

cold shooting some hoof. Jason wrapped it, acapella, slowly, with relish, with delight. I was entranced. This was almost

certainly my introduction to the whole NWA universe. I got to work a little harder, but I can still hear his voice in my head, too. And I'm happy about this one. Jason's gleeful delivery of knuckleheads out there,

cold shooting some hoops. Then Jason turned it into like a comedy routine where he pretended his mom walked in as he was rapping and he had to clean up the lyrics on the fly. cruising down the street in my six fall, waving to the people, slapping my dog.

It was quite endearing and wholesome, all things considered. Okay, here's what interests me about NWA for our purposes here today. The entrancing delight of Ice Cube speaking clearly through EZE. EasyE rapping Ice Cube's lyrics and telling you that he's doing it.

Drake makes a beat so fast monkey. Ice Cube writes and rhymes that I say. Hell to the niggas from CIA. That's from the song Eight Ball. The journalist Ben Westoff wrote a great book called Original Gangsters, Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, EasyE, Ice Cube, and the birth of West Coast rap. He says that neither Ice Cube nor EasyE drank alcohol at all when they first made this song. And Sir Jinks says in the book,

that when EasyE used to perform Eight Ball on stage, the 40-ounce bottle he was holding would actually be full of apple juice. Print the legend. You can hear both of them. Ice Cube and EasyE, the full force of both their personalities, transmitted just through Easy's voice. EasyE doesn't give a fuck with an amused sort of zeal. Ice Cube doesn't give a fuck with an enthralling sort of contempt. Put them together and you've got a force multiplier of not giving a fuck.

So Cube gives him the second best line on the song Gangsta, Gangsta, which unfolds as follows. another fantastic yeah another fantastic shout out Nancy Reagan but then Cube gives EasyE the best line on Gangsta Gangsta I'm sorry but this is stupendous And all you bitches

You know I'm talking to you We want to be stupendous We're getting bogged down in NWA Aren't we? We are The straight out of Compton record is a massive hit Fuck the police raises the ire of the FBI A bunch of other stuff happens including a bunch of Jerry Heller-based arguments about money,

and then Ice Cube quits NWA to go solo, resulting in what for now I will describe simply as myriad unpleasantries. For his first solo album, Cube wants Dr. Dre to produce it, but that's not going to happen due to the unpleasant trees. But fortunately, we've got a backup plan, as forecasted in 1990, when Cube parachutes in one of my favorite public enemy songs, Burn Hollywood Burn. Let's check out a flick that exploits the color.

Burn Hollywood Burn, as you might have guessed, is a song about how Hollywood movie roles for black people are often tremendously insulting to black people. An issue Ice Cube will soon be personally addressing. But more to the point, you ever thought about how hard it would be to rap on a public enemy song? To try and cut through the ecstatic, apocalyptic chaos of the bomb squad, public enemy's production crew, sometimes I just sit around and imagine various famous rappers, great rappers, a couple of accomplished rappers getting physically and audibly beaten up while they try to survive rapping on a bomb squad track. Ice Cube, to his infinite credit, has the tangible force, the charisma, the fury, the venomous glee. It would be corny to say he understands the assignment, but well, I said it.

Hollywood late at night. Red blue lights with a common sight. Ice Cube on a public enemy song suggesting that public. enemy isn't militant enough. Outstanding. I love it. Let's do this. That songs off Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet from the spring of 1990. About a month later, Ice Cube's first solo album comes out mostly produced by the bomb squad.

You know the Predator meme, the giant muscle armed handshake between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. This is the East Coast Rap epic handshake with West Coast rap Predator meme. The album's called America's Most Wanted. That's A M-E-R-I, capital K-K-K-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-P-S.

He antagonizes a truly impressive number of people in just four lines there. Does he not? I can't tell you the name of this song, which is, of course, the whole fucking point. His laugh there is so pure, so chari-matically malevolent, but so pure. Speaking of going pop, before we go any further, you know what the funniest moment on this whole record is? The song playing on the car radio in the background during a skit called The Drive-by. Young MC's bust a move playing on the car radio tracks me up every time. I can't explain it.

The cartoonish barrage of sound effects here is also very amusing. Cinematic. Amazing. What Ice Cube solidifies? on this record is what a godtier storyteller he is. This is a guy who's going to co-write a blockbuster screenplay in a couple of years. You may not want to hear the stories he's telling. You almost certainly won't always love the way he tells them. The story on You Can't Fade Me, where the lady's pregnant, and she tells him the baby's his, and he says a lot of terrible but

undeniably vivid stuff about it. Let's not get into it. But yeah, the song Once Upon a Time and the Projects. Sir James produced it. Cube said it's possibly wrote it thinking Easy E might do But now it's just Ice Cube sitting on another young lady's wobbly couch with his Nike's up on the coffee table observing. There's a bunch of dudes in the parking lot. The lady's brother is throwing up gang signs. There's a pregnant 13-year-old. It's overselling it to call this a character study. It's just Ice Cube super charitematically scowling at a small parade of people.

It was sats, no doubt. what he says have as much as how he says it, the amusement in his voice, and the fury as well. He is angry all the time. He gets funnier, the angrier he gets. That's a huge part of what makes him so funny. Then the mom's bitching because the county check wasn't white. Then the mom starts selling drugs, then the cops show up and bust everyone, including Ice Cube. You know what the single best line on this whole record is it's not the line but the line delivery i crack up at this every single time to that's the best line on their record just that the absolute fury of but that ain't the point the point he's

referring to is that he had a prior warrant so he still went to jail for a while but the point in but that ain't the point, ain't the point. The disgusted, exploded P in the word point is the point of, but that ain't the point. This eye for detail, this personality and radiant exasperation that Ice Cube conveys with every syllable he writes, this audible scowl, this will carry him no matter what he's saying or who he's saying it to. And this is a guy who wants both henchmen to back him up and antagonists to further infuriate him. His first solo record also introduces his new crew, the lynch mob, and laid on America's Most Wanted on a song called It's a Man's World. He even lets his protege, an 18-year-old rapper named Yo-Yo, yell at him for a while, though I suppose he

yells at her first. This is after a 30-second montage of various people, including EZ, saying the word bitch. This is four tracks after back-to-back songs called I'm Only Out for One Thing and Get Off My Dick and Tell Your Bitch to Come Here. This is coming from the guy whose first solo track on an NWA record is called A Bitch is a Bitch. You decide how much goodwill this person deserves for helping introduce Yo-Yo to the world. But what I'll say is that I enjoy Yo-Yo very much. Yo-Yo's 1991 solo album, Make Way for the Motherload is great. 30 years later, it would help inspire a rad book by journalist and friend of the show Clover Hope called The Motherload, 100 plus women who made hip-hop.

Yo-yo gets their own chapter, of course. On Yo-Yo's record, Ice Cube appears on a song called You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo. Yo-yo has also got songs called Stand Up for Your Rights, Put a lid on it, that's about safe sex. Girl, Don't Be No Fool. That's about not having sex with no good men. I got played, also about avoiding sex with no good men. And tonight's The Night, a duet in which he informs a rapper named Daisy D. That tonight is probably not the night they're having sex.

If you've ever done Salt and Peppers, let's talk about sex at karaoke, then Make Way for the Motherload is the album for you. But Yo-Yo proves on It's a Man's World that she can liven up an Ice Cube album, too. America's Most Wanted was a huge success. It cracked the top 20 of the Billboard album chart and sold a million copies within four months. And that's pre-SoundScan era. Back when the music industry still had a bullshit method for tallying album sales, basically they just called up record store owners and asked them what was selling. And somehow hip-hop and country records in particular always got screwed. The SoundScan era started March 1991. It basically means they started counting album sales with scanners and computers and math and logic. The immediate result was that everyone realized how popular Garth Brooks and rap music were. Within a month, the post Ice Cube NWA's second album, which insults Ice Cube several times, and also as a title, I Can't Say Out Loud, was the number one album in the country.

In the fall of 1991, Ice Cube responded on his second solo album, Death Certificate, which debuted at number two in the Billboard album chart behind Garth Brooks. And yeah, okay, let's get this over with. Death Certificate is produced by Ice Cube, Sir Jinks and the Booggyman. The record is divided into the Death Side and the Life Side. For your reference, giving up the nappy dugout, appears on the death side, and this song, No Vaseline, appears on the Life Side. No Vaseline appears on every list of the greatest hip-hop disc tracks of all time. Also, for many disgusted listeners, it is an irredeemable litany of homophobia and anti-Semitism.

on account of semi-villainous NWA manager, Jerry Heller, being Jewish. Another song in the Lifeside called Black Korea packs a truly alarming amount of anti-Korean racism into 46 seconds in the hell with it. Billboard magazine took the fairly extraordinary step of publishing an editorial denouncing death certificate, writing that the record's unabashed espousal of violence against Koreans, Jews, and other whites crosses the line that divides art from the advocacy. of crime. Now, the National Organization for Women went on to denounce this editorial is hypocritical because Billboard didn't also denounce all the misogyny. Ice Cube will be responding to this Billboard editorial, by the way, just you wait. It is difficult to hear the greatness amid the ugliness on death certificate is arguably not worth trying. But for posterity's sake, there is

true greatness here. Major greatness and minor greatness. Lines like this. Kill It Will is an EPCube put out right after America's Most Wanted. You Can New Jack Swing on My Nuts is excellent music criticism. Or there's lines like this in a song called Man's Best Friend, which is mostly about how Ice Cube prefers guns to dogs. The image of Ice Cube trying to hide a pit bull in his coat, that is a tremendous image. Truly.

It's silly. the song Alive on Arrival. Another fantastic bit of storytelling in which Cube gets caught in the crossfire of a street shootout and then dies of his gunshot wound in the hospital because no one will treat him. It pairs excellently with public enemies

911 is a joke. He gets shot. He gets dumped in an ER waiting room and he waits there forever with people stepping over him to get to the TV. Then Cube gets handcuffed to an ICU bed and the cops grill him

about who shot him and then he dies. Alive on Arrival is an exceedingly angry song spiked with laugh out loud detail. Two episodes of MASH does it for me every time. And you don't feel bad for laughing because by now you understand that Cube gets funnier, the angrier he gets. There's a CNBC interview from right after death certificate comes out.

Cubs on camera getting grilled by a reporter named Barbara Nevin's along with a bunch of viewers calling in. They confront him about the racism, the misogyny, the anti-sacist, Semitism, and he answers. He doesn't apologize, but he answers. Those answers are important, but this is the key moment for me. You know, I have trouble because I see the anger out there. I feel the anger directed at me as a white person. You see, excuse me, you see the anger, but you don't understand the anger. That's the problem. You see the anger, but you don't understand the anger, is the whole ballgame for me.

Ice Cube's anger manifested in some genuinely appalling ways. But his response, broadly, has always been that the people most appalled by his anger just don't understand where his anger is coming from. People think that, you know, the 60s that we got all the rights that we need and everything is all right. No, you can't give me a wound and just throw a Band-Aid over it. He goes on to talk about the racism he's experienced as a Band-Aid on a Gunsion. shot wound. She clarifies that the gunshot wound is metaphorical. The societal conundrum of separating greatness from ugliness in popular music is not solved in this conversation either. But whatever you

think of Ice Cube, you see the anger, but you don't understand the anger sticks with me. Because the anger is always there in his music, even when it's not at the forefront, even when he's at his funniest, his calmest, his poppiest. The anger is here, too. Just waking up in the morning, got to thank God, I don't know, but today seems kind of eye. No barking from the dog, no small. And Mama cooked a breakfast with no one. It was a good day as easily Ice Cube's biggest song.

It is his only top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, peaking at number 15. The Predator, which came out in November 1992, debuted at number one on the first. Billboard album chart. On the title track, the chorus is, Motherfuck Billboard and the editor, here comes the Predator. So there's your response. It was a Good Day. It has about 650 million plays on Spotify. This is the Ice Cube song pretty much everyone agrees on. Everyone loves. And every line is memorable and catchy and fun. Right? No barking from the dog. No smog. And Mama cooked a breakfast with no hog. That's fun. Have fun. Ice Cube's having fun and he wants you to have fun.

I got my girl Bohn, But didn't dig out Finally got a call From a girl I want to dig out Hooked it up for later As I hit the door

Thinking will I live Another 24 Ruminate a little bit On the line Thinking will I live another 24 Though That's all I ask That's all he asks

It was a good day As a song About how rare it is For Ice Cube to have a good day It was a good day as a song about how every day could be his last. It is objectively funny to imagine Ice Cube counting as assists and rebounds in his head. So he knows when he gets a triple double.

Just another knucklehead out there cold shooting some hoops. That's fun. Have fun. Just spare a quick thought for, I can't believe. today was a good day. Spare a quick thought for, plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A. I picked up the cash flow. Then we played those and I'm yelling down to know. Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A. Today was a good. You know the guy on Tumblr like 10 years ago who

determined the exact day on which it was a good day occurred. A Tumblr called Merck Avenue that determined that the good day in question occurred on January 20th, 1992, that's super fun. That's fantastic. That's peak blogging. To figure that out, you got to know when Yo MTV Raps premiered, when Pagers were commercially introduced,

when Ice Cube wasn't super busy acting in the era-defining 1991 John Singleton movie Boys in the Hood. You got to figure out when there was no smog in the morning in L.A., and most importantly, you got to look up when this happened. up a girl man trying to fuck sister 12th grade

It's ironic I had the room She had the chronic The Lakers beat the Supersonic Not the part about the girl with the chronic The part about the Lakers beating the Seattle Supersonics The Lakers beat the Supersonics

116 to 110 On January 20th, 192 In LA had clear skies that morning And Yo MTV Raps and Pagers Both existed And Cube wasn't busy shooting boys in the hood. That's the day. Fantastic. That's super fun. We're all having fun. Have fun. Go get something to eat. Just notice all the things that Ice Cube notices aren't happening while he goes to get something to eat.

One more great book to recommend to you by another friend of the show. It's called Who Got the Camera? A History of Rap and Reality by Eric Harvey about the rise of reality rap and reality TV. Ice Cube preferred the term reality rap to gangster rap. Who got the camera as another great song on The Predator. So this posts about early 90s TV shows like Cops and America's Most Wanted and albums like public enemies, Fear of a Black Planet and Ice Cube's Most Wanted. On the first page of this book, Eric quotes Ice Cube saying, I do records for black kids and white kids are basically eavesdropping on. my records but i don't change what i'm saying i won't take out this word or that word because i got white kids buying my records white kids need to hear what we got to say about them and their forefathers and

uncles and everybody that's done us wrong and the only way they're going to hear it on cut and uncensored is in rap music because i refuse to censor anything i have to say about anybody end quote a lot of people who listen to and love and rap along to it was a good day our eavesdropping put it that way i was i am for all ice cube's anger about other rappers who sell out who go pop who can new jack swing on his nuts this song on his terms is immaculate revered enduring pop music it's fun have fun wrap along do it or wrap along to most of it but depending on who you are and where you come from and what experience you have with where Ice Cube comes from, just respect the fact that this line

might feel a little different in your mouth. As a post-script, the very next song and the Predator is called, We Had to Tear This Motherfucker Up. It's about the L.A. riots in the aftermath of the 1992 acquittal of the four LAPD officers

in the Rodney King beating. It was a good day as a song, about one good day. The rest of Ice Cube's catalog is about every other day. Our guest today is the great Van Lathen co-host of Bringer podcast's Higher Learning

and the Midnight Boys, host of the new we TV series Hip Hop Homicides and the author of the book Fat, Crazy and Tired, Tales from the Trenches of Transformation. Van, you're very busy. Thank you very much for your time. No problem, my man. How goes it?

I'm very happy to talk to you. We've been wanting to have you on forever, and I'm thrilled that you're here. Thank you so much. I know you're from Baton Rouge, and I'm curious when you were growing up, when you would listen to NWA Ice Cube, Dr. Dre. How much do they contribute to the way you imagined L.A.? Like for me, I was in Ohio, and like those songs, those videos were so key to the way I pictured Los Angeles, if not all of California. Is that the way it was for you? Sure.

It begins with actually iced tea. It begins with colors. Colors. Colors. You know what I mean? I'm a nightmare walking. Psychopath talking. And so I had relatives in Los Angeles and it, I knew that my aunt Teresa and we would

eventually move out to L.A. for two years. I bet you'd even know that. I did. I did. I did. We lived in Los Angeles. You were there. Okay.

Never mind. So, no, no. But prior to that, though, I think West Coast hip hop informed me because it was, it had such a big foothold. in Los Angeles, excuse me, in Louisiana. It was so big in Louisiana, West Coast hip-hop. It was, we kind of adopted the West Coast even more so than the East. I guess like all hip-hop at that time, things had moved out West.

And it really took big and puff and some of those other guys to bring the mainstream consciousness back to what was going on in the East Coast. East Coast. The East Coast obviously never left. El Cooge, all of these guys, De La Coul Quest, all of that stuff was rocking in my crib. But the West had its own real real. them. They looked different. They sounded different. They talked different. Their hair was different. And there was a street ethos that existed on the West Coast where it seemed like they were shooting each other under palm trees. You know what I mean? It was just, it was, it was, it was big difference.

Big difference. It was, it was, it was Dickey suits. You know what I mean? It was, it was, don't go here, it was gangs, all of that stuff. And they just exploded all at the same time. And then I was born in 1980. So around the time that rap is really starting to infiltrate my mind. There's this rap group that everyone is telling you you can't listen to. It's something that only your older brother can listen to. Your older brothers, your older cousins can listen to. And then one day I'm with my older cousin, rest in peace to my cousin Brian. And I'm like, yo, man, do you have NWA?

And he's like, oh. And this is how he described NWA. and you would think that he would describe it in a different way. But this is how he described NWA. He goes, you ain't never heard Cuban him? You'd have thought that he just said, you never heard easy in them. He knew. You ain't never heard Cuban them?

And I remember us being in there playing Tecmo Super Bowl. Yes. And listening to NWA in the background. And then that began my love affair with West Coast Rap. there were eight plays in Tecmo Super Bowl, right? There were four plays you could pick in the first one, and then eight. There's a huge difference. That's like twice as many plays.

Yeah, the first one is like, you're a high school coach. The second one, there you go. Sean McVeigh. The West Coast offense. Yeah, right. But yeah, so we're playing that and we're getting into the music, and that's how I fell in love, you know? Okay, so I was going to ask, like,

where Ice Cube fit in, but it was sort of introduced you as, you know, Ice Cube was the first in line. He was the focal point for the beginning for you for West Coast rap. Yeah, because he was my cousin Brian's favorite rapper. So he was his favorite rapper. So when I was introduced to NWA, I was introduced to Ice Cube as being the focal part of NWA. And then my understanding of group dynamics, my understanding of what a producer does,

I understood what a hip-hop producer did because of Dr. Drake. Of course. Oh, like my understanding of all of those things happened, it was framed around, what was going on in the West Coast, you know? Yeah. So what did you think when Cube went solo? Were you a huge fan of him immediately, you know, from America's Most Wanted Forward? Who's the Mac, bro?

When the video for Who's the Mac dropped, ask yourself, who's the Mac? You know what I mean? And it's so funny because if you go back and look at the video for Who's the Mac, they called Donald Trump in that video a broke Mac. Because remember, he had just filed for bankruptcy. So, you know, Who's the Mac was this kind of, it was a little bit for me almost advanced as Ice Cube was really making social commentary. You know what I mean? He was really talking about who's pipping who in society.

You know what I mean? And it was just kind of a signal that Q would be different. But here's the thing for me. I was still probably only 9 or 10 when that came out. Maybe 11, I can't remember. did it, what did he did that drop? It's 90 and 91. Let me see. Yeah. Yeah. So it dropped actually 90. 90. Right. So I'm 10 years old when this comes out. Like, I wasn't aware that he had left NWA. Hmm. I didn't, you know, I was, you know, I wasn't aware that it was that it was all over. The drama

surrounding NWA, I really wouldn't catch on until later that summer when I talked again, blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh, man, it's all of this beef. This happened is, blah, blah, blah. Now, He ain't with them no more. So, you know, I just thought he was putting out some solo shit. But that began a relationship with Ice Cube that is lasting to this point right now. Hmm. For me, it was always so striking, like, how angry he sounded, right? But he was also funny.

Like, he's one of these guys who gets funnier, the angrier he gets. Like, the more pissed off he got, like, the closer you wanted to get to him. Like, does that make sense? It does. And his voice was so booming. Right, you know? Right. It was a four-file thing through a mothership, better known as a lynch mob.

And you're like, God damn, bro. Like the song just came on. You know what I mean? You already, like you already, that hype, the song just came on. But he had such a blooming voice. And to be honest with you, even though, you know, Ice Cube was as gangst as it as it gets, man, he had a point. Yeah. With everything that he was saying, the music had a social currency to it.

It had a message to it. He was an elevated hip-hop songwriter. It wasn't just making words rhyme. It was contextualizing the environment that he grew up with as it's, you know, as it fits into the larger American system of dysfunction and exploitation that he thought existed. Obviously, there was an influence from the nation of Islam that comes in at some point as he gets a little bit more radical in his political beliefs. You know, Ice Cube was not a safe rapper. He was not a safe rapper. He was a guy that a lot of times people say would have crossed certain lines of things that maybe you should or should not be saying.

But he was certainly somebody that set the tone in a lot of ways. set the tone in a lot of ways for the hip-hop mega-stars from the West Coast that will follow up. Definitely, you always struck me as a great storyteller. Like, the line from him writing, it was a good day to co-writing Friday, right? Makes so much sense to me. Like, he's such a great scene setter immediately.

Like, is it obvious in retrospect that he could be a hugely successful screenwriter, director, like movie star as well? I mean, I guess it was, but we were surprised when Boys and Hood's getting ready to come on us. Oh, ice cubes in the movie. Right. You know, and it was a time when we were kind of getting used to that.

Like, it was, oh, ice cubes in the movie. Oh, Tupac's in the movie. I'm like, why, these guys are really acting, not just acting as if, hey, it's your favorite rapper. Here he comes on the stage. Beach Street Johnny. And it's like, oh, he was in that movie. No, it's like he's really in the movie portraying a character as it as the Pock did in Juice. So I think Friday still surprised me, though.

Sure. Friday still surprised me because Cube was the straight man. He was the guy who wasn't gang. The Cube did something in Friday that not a lot of rappers ever do for their first role, which just show vulnerability. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? He was kind of the guy that got fired, the guy that had to work himself up to fight the big, bad wolf, you know,

And when I say his first role Obviously Boys in the Hood was his first role And he did some movies after that But Friday was the thing that exploded him out His first starring His first big deal Yeah so you know He was just

He was a full-fledged performer And in a lot of ways The first Hip Hop superstar That I gravitated towards I actually I kind of think Ice Cube is the first hip hop superstar period in a lot of ways, man.

Because of the movies? Because of everything, you know, so people don't even remember what a big deal Snoop was, right? Of course. Snoop sold $800,000 two weeks in a row. Yo, come on, man.

Like Snoop was out of here. It was different. It was whatever. Cube, and then, you know, you have Pock and you have a lot of guys around this time. Cube was able to get to that sort of

monoculture heavyweight title he's in a movie that is Oscar bait he is dangerous but still making critically acclaimed music he becomes sort of omnipresent not in hip hop culture but in culture in a way that I didn't remember

too many rappers I mean obviously you had MC Hammer but that was more of a pop type situation as far as a gangster rapper was concerned Cube was the one that I really remember kicking down that door and being a singular star that had all of those ingredients together. Right. And even in the movies, like, I think Friday and Higher Learning in the movie is the same year. Like those two roles right there is like more range than plenty of actors do.

As you say, let alone like a rapper being an actor. Yeah. So, you know, in Higher Learning, he plays the educated. He plays a role that's closer to Ice Cube. But it's devoid of all the gangster stuff. He's a super senior who is trying to, you know, educate the young bucks on what's really going on at Christopher Columbus University, very aptly named. So, yeah, and he's just, it starts to become a situation where it doesn't matter who you are, you can't escape Ice Cube. Ice Cube is, he becomes bigger than Rack. Right, right.

Does it surprise you when he gets to movies like, are we there yet, right? When he's not just a movie star, but he's a family-friendly movie star. Does that change the way you listen to his music or assess, like, the danger that he poses? No, because he also was one of the first guys to actually mature in the game,

him and L.L.L. Cool, J. Right. I was actually happy when I saw, you know, L.L. Cool, J., Will Smith, guys like this on sitcoms. Because what these guys are supposed to be? Is Will Smith supposed to be the handsome, streetwise, wise, cracking, fresh prince guy forever? Like, is he just that for us?

Can he be that for all of America? L.O. Kuljay was on a show called In the House with Debbie Allen. It's good to see those guys kind of stretch their wings. And we're, you know, it's not like Ice Cube went from death certificate to are we there yet. You know, there was so, you know what I mean? Few steps. Yeah, there was some steps in between these two things. There were other roles.

about three kings. Of course. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I never forget, it was either Spike Jones or George Clooney. It was probably Clooney that was on David Letterman. And David Letterman cracked a joke.

David Letterman goes, so it's Three Kings, it was Clooney, Walberg, and Ice Cube, right? Yeah. Right. So David Lemon cracked a joke. David Lemon goes, Ice Cube, yeah, how did he get that? And people laughed. I don't remember that.

I remember it because I was so pissed off. I was like, yo, man, why you front on Cube? And Clooney was like, you're unfamiliar with what a big star Ice Cube is. He's like, Ice Cube has been a star longer than any of us. You know what I mean? And, you know, it was, but in that situation, that movie itself was a,

fairly serious, pretty prestigious Hollywood production with a great director. And Cube was right there. Oscar bait, yeah. It was also famously like a terrible set. Like George Clooney and the director are fighting physically on set. Ice Cube is also a professional enough star to be like not involved in that. Like he's acting and he's doing his best work despite all the bullshit going on around it. Absolutely.

Because, you know, by that point he was, he knew what it was supposed to. He knew what Hollywood. It was about. You remember this is after Players Club. So this is after he had already directed a movie and been in the director's chair and seen all of that. Another movie that holds such a significant place in culture, man. In our culture, Players Club is the first time we got the story of the stripper by day, by day, student by night. Very important.

Very important. Very important for the way you treat the girls in the club. It's like, you go in there and you're like, hey, man, I give you a little bit more. because I know you got chemistry tomorrow morning. That's Ice Cube. Ice Cube, thank you, my friend. Musically, it was a good day,

is pretty comfortably his biggest, his most successful song ever. Does that song on its own still resonate for you? Yeah, and it was one of the songs that I, it's such an unconventional gangster rap song. Mm-hmm. No one had ever done, not that I remember. You know, there are other songs.

by ice cube, by love my summer vacation. Like, you know, all of this, all kinds of records that I love, right? Yeah. But there was never a song that I could remember about what didn't happen. Right, right, exactly. You know, gangster rap songs were, and still are, it remained, very much, very active songs. Very songs about what you have to do, what you need to do, what you're going to do if someone. But it's not very many songs about what you're.

you didn't do or what you did do that's out of the court out of the the the the the the the the the court of gangster rap or whatever like what you did do that's just don't hey guess what I had a great breakfast it's very much it's very much a suburban so hey what you do today hey man I had a great breakfast I played some basketball and you know what's crazy I ran it to this girl you know what I mean that I haven't I literally I literally haven't seen her since back of McKinley Middle School in the eighth grade. And things went pretty well. You know what I mean?

Like, you know what I'm saying? So it's just such a relatable song. Right. And I was watching Sports Center, watching Craig Kilbourne one time, Craig Kilbourne goes. Craig Kilbourne. I just remember Craig Kilbourne goes, Jason Kitt messed around a guy, a triple double. And when he says that, I go, man, we're on, bro. We all.

That's when he knows made it when Craig Kilbourne. But it seems stupid. But I'm looking, I'm like, man, we're out here, bro. We're out here. Like, everybody knows the record. And the record,

look, it's not my, like I said, not my favorite Ice Cube record, but it's everybody's, it's just such, it's just one of those joints, man. I don't know what to say about the song.

What can you say about the song? It was one that I remember another thing is my daddy goes, I like that song. Well, you know what the boy just talking about? He had a good day. That's what y'all need to be rapping about. Rap about that. Rap about your breakfast.

Yeah, rap about that. The boy said, bro, he raps in the song about taking a great shit, Rob. Mm-hmm. Think about the great day. You don't hear that often enough. You know what I'm saying? So, anyway, and I think it was the, I think it was the song that kind of, it kind of changed people's perception about Cube a little bit

because it maybe wasn't quite as aggressive, maybe wasn't quite as angry. It didn't have some of the same things that the other records did. So people were like, hey, this is something we can sink our teeth into. I was really struck by this quote of his I read where he said, like, basically, I make music for black people and white people are eavesdropping.

And I think about that now when I listen to this song because what I hear and it was a good day is him saying, most days are not as peaceful and pleasant as this one. Like he keeps saying, like, nobody I know got killed today. You know, the cops didn't fuck with me today. Like, even relative to most rap songs, do people hear this song very differently, depending on their circumstances?

I think so. I think for you do have days like that. Growing up in Ban Rouge, man, there were days where we were just sitting outside. The sun was beating down. You know what I mean? We had played basketball. We didn't see the police patrolling through the neighborhood.

And we was just like, man, things are actually okay. I'm serious. It's like, I know you are. It's like things are actually like, it's actually cool. It's good to be alive. Like we're straight. We together. We're safe.

Like we're not what people, nobody came. It says no helicopter looking for the murderer, right? We didn't have the ghetto bird in Baton Rouge. What we did have was like on this street over here and this street over here, two patrols that would go up and down like that, right? And where I live, like, you need them sons of bitches, but we were still over, over-policed. And, you know, it's like you're out there playing football

and nobody's telling you to get out the street. Like, we would go back in the back, we would play baseball. Nobody's telling you, hey, don't throw the baseball. Nobody fucking with you for no reason. You know what I'm saying? Nobody asking where your parents are, who you are, come over here. It would happen like that sometimes. resonated with us because it reminded us of those times when we forgot, you know, that you

growing up in a place that might not be so nice all the time. Right, right. Just because they were introduced as being so scary, like, what do you make of the canonization of NWA? Like, they get the biopic. They're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Like, they're rock stars now. You know, is it weird at all that a group so confrontational and dangerous when they started is now sort of revered seemingly by everyone? No, I think it's, I think it's perfect. I think it's a perfect ending to their story because they're dangerous in the same way that the stones were dangerous. They're dangerous to me in the same way that the Beatles became dangerous, right? The Beatles went from like, you know, I want to hold your hand to, you know, drug music.

Other stuff. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so the Beatles were, the Beatles, who they are, they reflected the dangers of the culture that they were privy to. They reflected, and you know, if you think that drug use is dangerous, if you think that, you know, experimentation with all that stuff is dangerous, that was the dangerous shit that the Beatles were going to be involved in. The Stones have a lot of lyrics that you listen to now, and you go, maybe not.

There we go. That sums it up. Maybe not. Maybe not, you know. But those were the controversial and dangerous sort of things, not in lockstep with mainstream society that were. reflected who they were. And unfortunately for the unfortunate reality for America is that the dangerous things that

NWA reflected were the dangerous aspects of the culture that they came from. So it might seem more foreign and more negative and more heinous to some, but to them, at least for them, because now I can make an argument that everybody else is just doing karaoke of what some of these guys were talking about that. But at least for them right away, that's kind of really who they were. So to see those guys now as fathers, obviously easy's gone, but to see those guys now as fathers, as moguls, as pillars and as billionaires, pillars in their community, I think it's only right to remember what it was that they came from, but also be able to celebrate what they are today,

you know? Yeah. So back in 2020, on higher learning, you know, you and Rachel talked about Cuban, Donald Trump. you know, there was a brief sort of dalliance there. Like, Cube dropped a movie role last year because he wouldn't get a COVID vaccine. I think, like, as you said, this is a guy who speaks his mind, who isn't afraid of controversy, who's still pissing people off today. Like, have the last three years or so changed your view of Cube at all?

Not really. I mean, you know, it's like, I think loving somebody means coming to terms with the fact that you're going to disagree with them. sometimes. And I do think that, you know, some of our luminaries outkick their coverage from time to time. And sometimes we over intellectualize things that maybe don't. But, you know, Cube is a disruptor. And as disappointed as I was with some of the stuff, I mean, he's never understood how to do it in a way that wasn't disruptive. So I think I have to, I think I have to respect that. And I have to respect people in agreement and in disagreement with them.

I don't think that there was anything. I hope that everybody that was flirting around with that stuff learned a lesson. You know what I mean? And as far as the vaccine goes, you know, that's his business. We ain't going to be hanging out. But, you know, that's what he wants to do. And I'm going to, you know, so it doesn't change my opinion of Ice Cube. But, you know, there's a little bit of the dark night in there.

Of course. You know, there's a little bit of the saying from the movie in there. I just think personally for me that the same thing that's going to piss you off that you love about somebody when you're 13, it might piss you off about them when you're 39. So, you know, I disagree, but I disagree with a lot of that stuff. But to his credit, he's had an open-door policy and he's been willing to have the conversations. I'm not sure how many inroads people made with him, but yeah. He was willing to talk, you know.

He wasn't willing to apologize, but he would go on the TV shows. He would let people yell at him. You know, he would say his peace. You probably wouldn't agree with him when he was done, you know, but he wouldn't hide. You know, he wouldn't run from it. You know, I was thinking about No Vaseline this week, just based on what's going on in music and in sports. Like, you know, that's going to be on every greatest hip-hop disc tracks list of all time, but it was also denounced as anti-Semitic,

you know, justifiably. I mean, of course, we're doing this with every pop star all the time, but is it especially challenging to balance what's great about him and what's infuriating about him sometime? As that calculus changed from 1990 to now? Do you know I learned about anti-Semitism

because of Novassemin? I'm sure there's a lot of people that's true for. Absolutely. So I remember Novaseline comes out like they're saying Ice Cube is anti-Semitism, And I was like, well, what does that mean? And he's like, yeah, he's like, he's against Jewish people. And I was like, oh, you can be against Jewish people.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm hearing this from my older cousin. And remember, there's this line that the black community, at least I don't want to speak for the whole black community walks with the nation. And the nation of Islam and those guys, if anything goes wrong in the black community, they show up immediately. You don't have to ask them. If two people are beefing, if you're hungry and you're walking by the mosque down to South Baton Rouge and you need some, a bean pie will magically appear like in your face. I mean, no, they really put on for the community.

So learning some of the stuff that people have a problem. with them about through Ice Cube, which was the way, the first time I learned that people didn't love different members of the nation and some of the priests was because they were saying that Ice Cube was being informed by the nation and that that was making him anti-Semitic. And I'm like, well, what's wrong with that? They're just Muslims. Like, you know what I mean? And so, you know, talking to my mom about it because I could not talk to my dad about hip-hop.

My dad was just nice. Except it was a good day. Everything else. Well, no, he talked to me. I mean, he was one of the, like, when he was saying, yo, I like that song, it was basically like, in opposition to some of these other songs. Yeah, I figured.

I liked that one. You know what I mean? So my mother goes, you just can't refer to somebody as that. And obviously he said, I don't, you know, we know what he said. I don't want to, you know, you say, you can't, when you say it like, that.

Right. When you say it like that, there's something behind it. And I'm like, what's behind it? And she was like, well, you know, people say that, that there are people that control people or stuff like that. And that's all very bad to say. And it leads to all of these bad things. And then I remember having like a conversation later on because I didn't really,

I still didn't understand it, right? I still didn't get why people were mad at Ice Cube. I'm like asking people about it. And then like, it's like, my sister goes, yo, would you stop talking about that? They haven't talked about World War II. Are you stupid?

You're getting excellent advice from your family here. Oh, no, because I was so inquisitive, right? Like, I really didn't under, but think about it, the Rob, you watch MTV and it's doodoo, like, MTV News. Dun, don't, do, and then there's fucking Tabitha Soren, and she's saying, I love Tabitha Soren.

There's Tabitha Soren and Kurt Loder, and they're saying that people are mad at Ice Cube and they're boycotting Ice Cube. And they're having interviews with Ice Cube. The interview that they actually redid on Straight Outta Compton, I remember that interview. Like it was yesterday with him talking about that. I don't know what any of this means. You're like 10. 11. Yeah. I'm like 11.

11. I don't know what any of this means. And the Internet is not there. So I have to ask people like, what this stuff means and why they're mad at him. And I'm not going to lie, bro. It took like a couple of years for me to be able to grasp people. To piece that together.

Yeah. That's a lot to absorb. Yeah. But anyway, it was a good day. Great song. Absolutely great song. In conclusion, fantastic song. We are pro Ice Cube, generally speaking.

Yes, yes. It was a good day, great song. Remember, a very young man trying to figure out his world. But, you know, to be honest with you, That's why it's important to have conversations about missteps. Think about how valuable that was to me to contextualize what I believed in my mind was right and wrong. Absolutely. By understanding the grander scope and context of the world, you know what I mean?

So it's important that we don't just go into our respective foxholes on these things and where with this, where with that, and just shoot it out. It's important that we have those conversations so that, you know, can actually get a little smarter from it. Absolutely. Man, this has been great. I really appreciate you talking. Oh, no problem, man. I'm, you know, I just

came back from the gym, so I'm more hyper-verbose than normal, so I'm sorry about that. The Drake album really got you pumped up there. We can tell. No, it didn't, but that's okay. Thanks for having me, Rob. No problem. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Van Lason.

Thanks for our producers. Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma and thanks as always to you for listening. And now, if I were you, I would go listen to Ice Cubes. It was a good day. See you next week.