Ice Cube, "That New Funkadelic" (Lench Mob/Interscope)
The conventional wisdom would be to feature "Arrest the President" off Ice Cube's new album, Everythang's Corrupt. The gears of justice are inexorably grinding toward that climactic conclusion, and the 49-year-old rapper/former N.W.A. MC extraordinaire delivers an aptly stern rebuke to the traitor in chief over an aptly ominous and starkly funky production: “Arrest the president / You got the evidence / That n*gga is Russian intelligence.” In an interview on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show, Ice Cube further elaborated on the concept of Everythang's Corrupt. “It’s not just corruption of the system. A lot of people…we are corrupting our bodies. We corrupting our neighborhoods. We corrupting our minds. There’s a lot of corruption going on that we got to figure out what kind of world we want to live in.” The only thing missing from "Arrest the President" are bars from Don Lemon and Rachel Maddow.
Although "Arrest the President" deserves heavy airplay and anthem status, that song doesn't reference George Clinton and Funkadelic, who play the Neptune Theatre tonight. Not only that, but Ice Cube performs tonight, too, at the Showbox. What are the odds? (Perhaps Ice Cube will slide on over to the U District for a P-Funk cameo.) So, this rare coincidence compels me to write about "That New Funkadelic," even if it isn't peak Cube.
"That New Funkadelic" is our dude in raunchy party mode, as he pays copious homage to one of his main inspirations, the world's greatest Clinton (sorry, Billary). With the first line, "You know the beat's so sweet, like booty meat," leered over Bernie Worrell-esque spacey synth burbles, Bootsy Collins-like bass wiggle, sensuous backup-vocalist coos, and bulbous, ass-smacking beats, you know you're in for a debauched four minutes of refried Funkadelicized groove science. "Got an uncle named George/Horny motherfucker always down to orge [sic]." Yeah, the track's as predictable as a Trump lie, but it's way more satisfying, and it also contains a nice "mannequin/panickin'" rhyme. Slack must be cut... as well as a rug.
