Ice Cube
Ice Cube
O'Shea Jackson Sr., known by his stage name Ice Cube, is an American rapper, songwriter, actor, record producer and filmmaker. He began his career as a member of the hip-hop group C.I.A. and later joined the seminal rap group N.W.A. After leaving N.W.A in December 1989, he built a successful solo career in music and films. Additionally, he has served as one of the producers of the Showtime television series Barbershop and the TBS series Are We There Yet?, both...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth15 June 1969
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I believe how you measure a good movie is how many times you can see it. With comedies, I like to be a producer, because comedies can get corny and go off track real fast. I'm always the 'less is more' guy when it comes to a scene. So I'ma be the one who will keep it grounded.
Everybody is worried about the guy with the black power, leather jacket on, Afro ... worried about those kind of people and not really knowing that racism is not just the obvious.
What I wanted people to recognize is that racism is in all of us, in layers. Some in more layers than others. It's not just the Klan guy and the black-fist guy, and it's about peeling away those layers.
I hear about people getting shot all the time. But most of the guys you hear about getting shot pulled through.
When you go to a movie, you don't care for one Oscar, really. Do you care if a guy got a Oscar on the shelf or is it a good movie? And, you don't care how much the movie made.
I know my flavor's going to work because I just know there's not a lot of guys like me around. So you got to figure out what's that about you.
Sometimes guys just want the girl and want to drop the kids off anywhere they can. Guys it’s a package. You like a woman, she’s got kids, it’s a package. You can’t just go in one-sided. It’s pretty cool.
When I was in N.W.A. and didn't get paid all the money I was owed, that's when the business side of showbiz hit me.
I think the worst thing you can do about a situation is nothing. You have to get it out in the open. You have to talk about it.
I thought it was a good opportunity to perform on TV and get the message out there.
I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.
South Central is just who I am. Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out.
It's not like I'm the first man ever to do this, y'know? You gotta go back to Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. Those are people who've done music well and movies well, and y'know, Frank Sinatra and Elvis and all these dudes have made the transition. I don't know about Elvis, 'bout doin' 'em good, y'know? It's nothin' new.
'Boyz-n-the-Hood' was actually supposed to be written for Eazy's group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.