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 never was in the Nation of Islam... I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, 'cause it's just me and God.
I make a mean cup of coffee, if you give me the right ingredients.
I'm not the type of actor who is trying to do a whole bunch of different stuff, you know what I mean?
I'm always happy. I've just got a mean face.
I would love to meet Bob Marley. I mean, he's passed, but that's somebody that I would've loved to meet.
They thought we were just basically keeping ourselves underground on purpose. And it was just strange for people to approach music that way. And for rap, trying to get recognition, and be seen as a regular form of music like anything else. I mean, the Soul, R&B, Rock 'N Roll, they would dis the hell out of rap when it first came out.
My thing is: stay creative. And just because somebody starts to pay you, that don't mean all your creativity goes to that, and you don't save none for yourself to be able to do other, bigger and better things and still follow your dreams even if you start off inside of a box.
I think you have to find how the machine can work for you. That's what I mean by "attaching yourself to the machine," 'cause the machine is going to be there, and you can rage against the machine, which is cool, but there's ways that you can benefit off the machine if you're savvy enough and you're sharp enough, smart enough. We all got to live and eat.
Black. White' will force people to challenge themselves.
I thought it was a good opportunity to perform on TV and get the message out there.
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.
To see it as a game is dope. You know they've got all these other games, and they finally gave a little respect to one of the classic movies in American history.
We wanted to be true to what a barbershop is, so every headline we could grab between the first 'Barbershop' and the second was in there,
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.