Three decades after clashing with a Billboard editor over a negative review of his 1991 Death Certificate album, Ice Cube’s relationship with the publication has come a long way.
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The 55-year-old is still the “crazy motherf–ker named Ice Cube” but an evolved version. Cube returned on Friday (Nov. 22) to deliver his anticipated Man Down album — his first since 2018’s Everythang’s Corrupt, which served as his only release under Interscope Records.
“If I ain’t making somebody mad, I ain’t doing something right,” Ice Cube told Bootleg Kev earlier in November about his mindset coming into every album, and Man Down is no different.
The South Central icon’s unfiltered thoughts and cinematic pen play out across 19 tracks featuring Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Killer Mike, E-40 and a first-ever collaboration with Xzibit.
Cube’s already got his sights set on a companion project with a Man Up sequel, which plays off his feelings that America’s gotten too sensitive these days.
About an hour before hopping on a Zoom with Billboard, Kendrick Lamar shook up rap’s landscape when he dropped a metaphorical bomb on the industry with his surprise GNX album. While Cube declared himself “Kendrick before Kendrick” on Man Down single “It’s My Ego,” he isn’t too worried about Lamar crashing his release day.
“That’s why Kendrick putting out a record doesn’t hurt my mission of serving my fan base,” he explains. “This record is for Ice Cube fans. I know Ice Cube fans gonna check me out — and that’s why I said, ‘Mission accomplished.’”
Check out the rest of our interview with Ice Cube as we dive into his World Series performance, how “Not Like Us” measures up to “No Vaseline,” Straight Outta Compton and more.
Kendrick Lamar just dropped his album an hour ago. How’s he gonna step on Cube’s release day?
Yeah, it was a secret record. I’m interested to check it out. It ain’t no stepping on nothing. My fan base been waiting for this record and they gon’ check mine out. His fan base is gonna be pleasantly surprised that he dropped a record. I don’t look at it that way.
How do you know when [Man Down] is done? How was the creative process and has that remained the same your entire career?
The process changed, the people changed, producers and engineers. Things have an ebb and flow. When I feel like it’s one cohesive statement and other records don’t fit into this realm I feel like the record is ready to be put out. I got more records than this and they didn’t fit on the Man Down project. Maybe they’ll make it on the Man Up project.
Is the Man Up sequel a play on how America’s gotten too sensitive out here?
Yeah, it is. It really is. It’s about men not accepting nonsense and speaking up and not just taking a backseat letting other people take the lead. We gotta take the lead.
Veteran MCs have really been bringing it this year. They say hip-hop’s a young man’s game, but Rakim dropped, Snoop and Dre coming up and you dropped. How do you feel about the guys making noise?
Most of the people who say hip-hop is a young man’s game don’t do it and ain’t never gripped a mic and ripped it. I’m not worried about my ACL and my Achilles. This is wordplay, this is wordplay and flow. This is skill and beat selection, concept and hook selection. The veterans are great and should continue to make the music that we love you for.
“Break the Mirror,” I did not know that was your first time ever teaming up with Xzibit.
Yeah, our first time on wax. We been down with each other for a long time. I’ve always loved his flow and the choices he makes on wax, lyrically and his beat selection is next level. It was cool to get on a track with him.
As far as your label situation, are you not with Interscope anymore? You were for the last project.
Not with Interscope — I was with the last project. This one’s totally independent Lench Mob Records with Heatmaker. It’s been a great pairing. Great working relationship. This our first project together. We been making a lot of noise up until the release date. We been doing everything we need to bring awareness to it.
I saw a bar you said, “You’re gonna lose your fan base chasing a fan base.” If you could expand on that.
When you first get in the game you just want to expand your fan base. You’re trying to become a world wide artist so you’re loved all over the world. You’re always reaching for more and more people to recognize you and dig what you do. At a certain point, if you reach so much, you end up stretching the s–t out yourself or coming detached from base. You’re just floating and your base left you and you’re looking for new fans that may not even come. You’re baseless. Always serve your fan base — the people that got you there and been there year after year. Always keep them in mind when you’re doing anything and let new fans come to you, don’t reach for ’em.
I think younger artists run into a hit or are looking for the next one instead of playing the long game and developing a fan base.
Yeah, develop yourself and cultivate your fan base. Learn how to do that. That’s the future. We can be on 1,000 different platforms, but it’s gonna come down to do fans come directly to you for what you have to give. That’s why Kendrick putting out a record that doesn’t hurt my mission of serving my fan base. This record is for Ice Cube fans. I know Ice Cube fans gonna check me out and that’s why I said, “Mission accomplished.” Feedback from my day ones is they love the record. It’s a beautiful day.
Let’s talk about the World Series performance. After the Freddie Freeman grand slam you come out for game two in L.A. and I’m like, “This isn’t looking too good for us [Yankees fans] right now.”
I think it was because of the grand slam that gave us a lot of momentum. Salute to Fat Joe — it’s tough when your team is down 0-2 — and my team has been down 0-2 in the championship, you don’t want to hear no damn rap. You don’t want to hear nobody. I don’t give a damn who’s up there. You’re ready to get to the game. You relly don’t want to hear the National Anthem. You just want to get to the game — let’s play and get back into this series. For me, Fernando Valenzuela had passed away a few days before the series started, so there was a lot of emotion in the building. It was a good look.
Then at the parade that clip of Dave Roberts dancing with you performing. Did you know that was him out there with you?
Nah, at first I thought it was a fan or a security dude. I looked and was like, “Oh, this Dave!” I’m rocking out. Dave was faded, he was off that champagne. He was feeling pretty good and had a good night. It was fun to see him party. The fans dug it and it was a viral moment for sure.
I saw it was The Predator‘s 32nd anniversary last week. What was special about that time? It went No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Just that the record was highly anticipated. I had some huge hits off that record. Me personally, I was sick of so much controversy behind every single record that I dropped up until then. I just wanted to bust raps. I wanted to show that it wasn’t a Stephen King, but I can rap and bust a rhyme. You got songs on there like “Wicked” where I wanted to show that I’m a true MC and not just a shock rapper trying to find a subject to shock you. That’s what people were coining me as. I went into that record just wanting to prove lyrically I’m one of the best.
You touched on racial tensions and a lot of things going on in the world at that time while trying to prove you’re an MC. Did the L.A. Riots and things going on influence your songwriting?
Yeah, it was a situation where I didn’t expect the riots. It just unfolded and happened. I had to address it on the record. I did. It was cool. I had a lot of issues with that record with the editor of Billboard at the time. He was really against the Death Certificate record. It probably had a lot to do with Jerry Heller. I was looked at as damn near a villain in the music industry. It wasn’t really fair to Priority Records and people who had put their money behind me to just carry that title and be controversial and try to sell records. We’re in the record business. This isn’t the fight-against-the-world business. I didn’t want a personal vendetta to start affecting record sales. I had partners and people who put money behind the s–t and I wanted to serve them.
I saw this clip going viral of Keke Palmer talking to Shannon Sharpe and she recalled some advice you had for her on the set of The Long Shots. I don’t know if you remember it, but it clearly stuck with her.
I just saw a 14-year-old girl who’s very friendly on set. I just wanted her to make sure she protected herself in this business. I just know that it’s shady. It’s a shady business. When I work with any of the kids, I try to give them good advice about the business, so they can protect themselves in all ways. Not only protect themselves from that, but you gotta watch yourself on a movie [set]. You gotta make sure everything is safe and take care of yourself on the movie set.
John Singleton told you, “If you can write songs like you write, you can write a movie.” Did he put the battery in your back for movies?
Yeah, he hit me with that one day. I was sitting in his kitchen one day and we were talking about Boys N the Hood coming together. Then he hit me with that quote. That day I went and bought a computer and told him to get the Final Draft program. Started to think of what story I wanted to tell, and I’ve been writing ever since.
What did you think about Kendrick [Lamar] unifying the West Coast in his battle with Drake? And how does “Not Like Us” measure up to “No Vaseline?”
As a hit, it’s humongous. As a diss, it’s top-notch. It’s one of the best disses that’s ever been done. Me and my homie Dub-C (WC) talked about it, when the battle first started — we were like, “The first one who does the battle off a hit beat, it’s gonna be a knockout blow.” It’s gonna cause a lot of damage. Because that’s what “No Vaseline” is: It’s a hardcore diss, but it’s over hit music.
It’s hard to miss when you got that combination. When I heard “Not Like Us,” I was like, “He got it.” It’s the perfect music for the perfect diss. Where he goes that “No Vaseline” don’t go is that he made it a hood anthem. Everybody’s singing along and can scream that hook. You could be talking about the football team across the field and be like, “They not like us.” It’s just an anthem that brings everybody in. Just on that tip alone, that three-pronged combination of incredible lyrics, it cut deep and it’s hit music. Then making it an anthem, it’s hard to beat that.
With Straight Outta Compton, I think it’s the best rap biopic that I’ve seen. We’ve botched a few but that was so well done. How important was it to make sure that it was well done, having your son playing yourself but also telling the story on a high level?
We had to do it right. I was thinking of all the filmmakers who were really difficult on set. The producers who fought tooth and nail to get it done their way. That’s the kind of producer I was. I was not gonna take no for an answer. Probably made some people mad and rubbed them the wrong way — sorry about that, but we had to get it right. We couldn’t botch this. We couldn’t f–k it up. My son playing me, as a father-parent, watching your son on the highest stage perform and achieve his dreams of doing movies — amazing.
Ultimately, he was the right guy for the job. They brought in four other Ice Cubes. It wasn’t working. He was the best person for the job. That’s why he got it. I’m pretty sure if there were better Ice Cubes they would’ve got the job. It wasn’t up to me, it was up to the head of Universal Donna Langley, F. Gary Gray and a few others in the room. I wasn’t in the room when he auditioned. I was at home waiting for a phone call. I had nothing to do with the process on that tip. Ultimately, looking at all the ones that tried out, he was the best.
How close were the scenes to reality when you watch them back — like the Detroit concert arrest, and the final meeting with Eazy-E when he pulls up on you at the club and you guys hash it out?
That was totally on point. The Detroit scene had happened in Cincinnati — the half where we get ran into the paddywagons. Movies you gotta summarize. You’re trying to get 10 years into two-and-a-half hours. Some things that happened in a week or month, you might have to squish into two scenes as part of the journey. You figure out how to make that make sense and still be what happened. What really locks that up is the dialogue. Most times movies are done and the people are dead, but by having most of us all here, we were able to make sure the dialogue was on point and those conversations were pretty much the exact ones that went down. It was all what happened but done in a cinematic way. [The Eazy-E scene] happened at the Tunnel.
21 Jump Street, what do you remember about that movie and the cast?
It was fun to work on a comedy that I didn’t have to produce. I was acting in it and I can kind of kick back and pop up and do my thing. And with Jonah Hill and Channing [Tatum], we knew we were in good hands. And those directors are crazy. It was fun to play Captain Dickson.
I saw you talking to Coach Prime, Deion Sanders, you think we’re gonna get him and his son Shedeur over to the Las Vegas Raiders?
That would be a dream come true. Prime is one of my favorite NFL players of all time, and he’s a good friend. To see him on the Raiders sideline with his son at the QB position would be — man I’d be there every game. That’s great for him and great for the Raiders and Vegas and the fans of the team. It would be next level.
How many Dodgers hats do you own?
Maybe about 25 of them around here. All different colors.
