Even though he’s been on the comedy-film track for a while now, Ice Cube will always have serious street cred for his tenure in N.W.A. (he’s considered the founding father of gangsta rap), and for the fruitful solo hiphop albums that followed (AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Death Certificate in 1990 and 1991, respectively).
His brash, pointed lyrical style is legendary, and he’s just released his first album in eight years: Everythang’s Corrupt. The cover art—a bloody hand gripping a $100 bill—indicates what Cube is about before you even take a listen, and the very first track, “Arrest the President,” finds him tearing into the current administration with his trademark ferocity (“Arrest the president, you got the evidence / That nigga is Russian intelligence (Okay) / When it rains it pours / Did you know the new white was orange? / Boy, you’re showing your horns / They’re tryin’ to replace my halo with thorns”). The rest of the album is more of the same on a broader political and social scale; police brutality against blacks, the opioid crisis, and the rise of the alt-right included.
But never fear, there’s plenty of good-time anthems to break up all the angst. Listen to the stealthy, mighty fine “Can You Dig It”—every verse, their following chorus, and, very subtly, Cube’s style corresponding to a different era of hiphop, from the ’70s to ’90s, while P-Funk/George Clinton’s homage, “That New Funkadelic” (which Dave wrote about earlier today) is simple, make-ya-ass-shake music.
Ice Cube performs at the Showbox tonight, brought to town by cloud-computing startup Mesosphere in conjunction with its KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 tech conference. I dunno if he’s appearing at the conference, but he is definitely performing afterward. Treat yo self. Some songs you know and love (and new cuts) below.
And … a special spoken word treat:
