With West Coast hip-hop currently enjoying a prominence equal to its G-Funk heyday this Ice Cube retrospective is a timely reminder of just who was the real LA radical.
After walking out on seminal gansta' rap godfathers NWA in 1989 following a royalties dispute, Ice Cube embarked on a trio of albums that are amongst the best ever to emerge from the streets beneath LA's elevated roadways. 'Amerikkka's Most Wanted' made Ice Cube's manifesto abundantly clear: raw beats and hard-hitting, often militant, social commentary. Cube was turning the tools of his and Dre's gangsta creation - the first-person violent narratives - into politicised commentary on the increasingly decaying LA communities that surrounded him.
Crucially, it was the production genius of Public Enemy beatmakers, The Bomb Squad, that brought these urban tales into sharp focus. And, in many ways, Ice Cube's combination of sunny Clinton funk and crackling violence makes even better bedfellows with the Sadler/Shocklee sound than Chuck D's pointed political rhyming. For a while, Ice Cube was Chuck's dark cousin.
With 'Death Certificate' and 'The Predator' he didn't win himself any fans in the Jewish, gay or feminist communities and largely compromised the power of his political position with NOI and right-wing prejudices. Both were, however, unparalleled works of innovation and drama and remain largely unsurpassed in the West Coast hip-hop canon. As complete concepts - particularly 'Death Cerfificate' - they make Dr. Dre's 'Chronic' sound like a couple of singles and a lot of filler.
Things started to go wrong with 'Lethal Injection', by which time Snoop was becoming a global star of unprecedented proportions in the hip-hop world and G-Funk was bumping out of every car on every street. Ice Cube felt the pinch and, dispensing with the radical sonic fuzz crafted by the Bomb Squad, he took to the boards himself with the help of Da Lench Mob's Sir Jinx and others to turn out oodles of slick P-Funk. Little of it had much impact other than the perfect 'It Was A Good Day' re-tread of 'You Know How We Do It'. His blossoming acting career now seemed to be in the driving seat and the coming releases, 'War And Peace' Vols 1 & 2 did little to salvage his reputation for sonic radicalism.
This retrospective simply commands that we acknowledge Ice Cube as one of hip-hop's greats and an innovator beyond even current West Coast deity of choice Dr Dre. Both will be remembered for 'gangsta rap' and Dre will be remembered for his proteges Snoop and Eminem as well as two waves of uniquely genre defining production sounds. Cube though, should settle for an entry in hip-hop's big book under 'radical'.
His best work combines the talents of hip-hop's most innovative producers with the ferocity and excitement of one of the music's great storytellers at the peak of his game. If they don't know it already, trust me, it'll be on his 'Death Certificate'.
