The Thing About Ice Cube

Ice Cube... Ok, first the layout. What I now have heard called reality rap was a tribal shout game which all sorts of neighbourhoods took part in. South Park Psycho probably being my favourite. This is my hood, this is what happens here and this is what we do.

Ice Cube is clearly a momma's boy. So he wasn't just lost and groping like all the others. He made it actually real, brought the actual real shit to his hood shout game. Cause they say it, they didn't mean to be superstars, they just wanted to be ghetto stars. To represent. But it was so real, so much the product of a momma's boy, that it took over not only reality rap, not only rap, not only pop music, but culture itself.

And yes, destroyed reality rap as it had been so far. Ganksta NIP had no chance after. But he will live on eternal with his sick beats and dope ass rhymes. After Cube, only the likes of Snoop and Tupac ever had a chance. Probably Biggie only made it cause he could stand up to those guys. He reached back to before reality rap to the NY business first fuck you die like a soldier rap and produced something magnanimous. For the gangstas, Biggie is king. Like the ones who actually sling dope and that. Tupac is, of course, too good of an actual person, too noble and honorable, to be the guiding light for crack dealers.

Until, inevitably, Eminem spelt the collapse of the whole thing into club music, Xibit and Lil John and them. Not hating. But it's just club music. "Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way." Until a man rose up and put the dirt back into rap. And his name was called, Lil Wayne. He's still in the club, but he is a gangsta again, like rappers supposta be. And when the young thugs saw how much fun Lil Wayne was having, they threw all the old shit away and made Trap. Biggie lives in trap, with his methodical triumphing. Along the way, somehow M.I.A. happened and, even more weirdly, with all the splash she made, seems to have gone by unnoticed. Not in the underground of course. Don't know how it is now a days, but she was king.

Does Tupac live in trap? Or Easy? Probably not. Easy never actually liked being a gangsta and Tupac probably never really was one. The seeds of tomorrow? Time will tell.

Successful mommas boys tend to have greater impact... could be true. Roots. Hard to make it as one, has to be totally real before oneself, often place others before yourself. Agreed, Xibit is nothing, empty club full of empty peoples, early 2000s were weak. It speaks volumes that Beyonces In Da Cub was the best version. Eminem was best with Kim. For me anyway. Pure white trash music.

I think Tupac and Eazy would both work on trap extremely well, trap has compensated for the lack of such hard minds, but it will only be enhanced. Especially 2pac.

I now imagine Eazy to the beat of Niggas in Paris.

"Nice Cube"