Everything about Ice Cube is hewn from stone and forged from the earth.
From a voice made hoarse following sold-out shows at Sydney Opera House for Vivid Live to the New Era black LA Dodgers baseball cap adorning his head and shrouding a face made famous from the era of MTV, O’Shea Jackson is the real deal.
Ahead of his final performance for Vivid Live, Ice Cube sat down with Double J’s Zan Rowe (28 May) for an hour to chat about the five songs that changed his life.
And while it may seem unlikely to find one of the world’s most famous rappers dignifying the stage of the Dame Joan Sutherland Theatre in the Concert Hall of Sydney’s Opera House, his presence for Vivid Live is an indication of how far hip hop – and he – have evolved.
But even gems emerge from the earth’s crust, rugged and rough from years of metamorphosis.
Nurtured on the street life of the West Coast, in South Central LA’s Compton, poverty, unemployment, gangs and drive-by shootings served as the daily bread for a young O’Shea while ‘The Message’ fashioned as his butter.
Image © Prudence UptonYears of contention may have been worn into him before he even walked the earth; from a family history steeped in the segregation, civil unrest and Black History of the Deep South to his father’s life-changing – and likely life-saving – decision in the 1950s to cut ties from his home in Louisiana and leave for a new start in California.
As the youngest in a family with siblings up to a decade older, Cube cut his teeth on the conventional music of post 1960s African-American households such as Al Green, Stevie Wonder; the legacy of disco’s 12-inch extended-play LPs birthing tracks that played long and hard featuring the textured colours of soul and the downbeats of funk – incredibly different to today’s by-the-numbers format of three minutes, two note harmonies, straight 4/4 beats, two verses surrounded by repetitive choruses, and a bridge (if we’re lucky).
It is hardly surprising then, when Cube reveals his tastes in music run from Grandmaster Flash to James Brown, Marvin Gaye, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic and Sam Cooke; tracks with that edge of breaking the mould and standing out for its political undertones, retribution and goddam funk.
And it is this music that has served as the foundations upon which his glittering career on stages – and oft-times chairs – performing to crowds around the world has been built.
It’s been a contentious, yet varied course we are all familiar with; spanning from the '90s starting out as a rapper with his days in NWA now immortalised on the hit movie ‘Straight Outta Compton’, to extend to appearing on and writing for the silver screen, featuring in beer ads, licensing a clothing line and launching BIG3 championship sports.
Image © Prudence UptonGemstones after all offer many facets - not just one.
Ice Cube’s rap has nimbly traversed through the transitioning eras of analogue into digital and his taste in music is indeed a tribute to this.
But it is the controversy that is never far away; that deep-seated and natural cheek to have no fear of poking the beast that flavours the music that sustains him and peppers his career while elevating him to one of the most prolific and successful music stars in the world.
In a world striving to find and retain its authenticity, O’Shea Jackson has been moulded by contention and controversy into an original 24-carat Ice Cube.
