'I miss it': Legendary rapper Ice Cube returns to Vancouver
Ice Cube celebrates 40 years of dropping dynamic raps on the Truth to Power Tour
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Ice Cube is looking forward to getting back to Vancouver.
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'I miss it': Legendary rapper Ice Cube returns to Vancouver Back to video
The rapper, who dropped his 12th album, Man Up, on Sept. 12, brings his 40th-anniversary Truth to Power tour to the Pacific Coliseum on Sept. 20. Tickets start at $44 at ticketlleader.
It’s the first visit to B.C. in a while for the hip-hop superstar, who filmed several of his hit comedies, including 2005’s Are We There Yet?, here.
“I’ve done a few films up there and I miss it, since I haven’t been there in a minute,” he said. “Every time there is a possibility floated of either filming in Vancouver or Atlanta, a lot of times, I’m hoping it’s Vancouver. Who knows? I’ve got a few surprises that’s going to pop up.”
Upbeat and funky, Man Up’s first single is titled Before Hip Hop.
The video for the song captures the bell-bottomed era of the 1970s, turning the oft-idealized vision of the decade upside down by highlighting the crime and societal unrest of the period. The clip is a showcase for everything Ice Cube does right, including defending hip-hop culture against its critics.
In the press release for the song, Ice Cube outlined its purpose: “It’s easy and lazy to look at what’s going on in a lot of communities and blame hip-hop for everything.” The song, the artist adds, calls out “the revisionist, showing how crime and injustice existed long before hip-hop music,” referencing the 1980s, when gangster rap brought stories of South Central Los Angeles to global listeners.
“We didn’t cause it — we just called it,” he adds.
Directed by Gabriel Hart, the video bounces along through scenes of everything from assault rifle-toting Black Panthers and back-alley craps games, to stories of the streets rendered in raw black-and-white film. Ice Cube stars in the film.
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From his beginnings in the game-changing group N.W.A. to launching a solo career that has placed him in the music history books, the man born O’Shea Jackson has expertly flexed his brand across music, movies, television and sports franchises. Just before announcing his new tour and album, the remake of the classic sci-fi thriller War of the Worlds dropped on Amazon Prime Video.
Critics hated it. Fans watched it. Ice Cube crossed it off his to-do list and went right back to work. It’s his way.
“What you dream of as an artist is longevity and, to do that, you know you have to keep up your end of the bargain,” he said. “That means giving people something that they keep coming back for. When you’ve been here for 40 years, you are going to cater to your core fans first and everyone else can come around as they will.”
His creative process for projects leans into many different aspects of the entertainment industry. Being able to depend on certain collaborators means more development of the stories he tells in songs, such as the slamming single It’s My Ego from Man Down. As classic an example of ’80s West Coast G-funk rap as you can find, the song has been celebrated for that quality — and also dissed for it.
Ice Cube doesn’t sweat the commentary. He says whatever he releases is something that he likes.
“I get sent music all the time from different people, and when it connects with one of the titles or hooks that I’ve created is when I start to make a full song,” he said. “Hip-hop can be brutal if you go around chasing changing styles, and I admit I’ve done it. You have to catch yourself, do what you do, and let the others do what they do.”
Titling the tour Truth to Power has double meaning to the rapper.
“There is speaking truth to power, like offering up street knowledge in reality or gangsta rap, and there is also living the truth, which speaks to power, too,” he said. “You don’t always have to be talking publicly, in an official capacity. It can also be when you are speaking truth to yourself alone.”
For all the seriousness that such discussions inhabit, Ice Cube stresses that he’s always having a lot of fun.
“No doubt, it’s not the news and you can drop something serious and funny in the same line if you want to,” he said. “The reality of life, how I grew up, was that it was funny and tragic at the same time on the same day. So the best approach is to always have make room for a little comedy relief to lay a heavy message down.”
This approach can be something of a double-edged sword, such as in the song from Man Down, called So Sensitive. With its lyrics about trigger words and gender roles, it could be seen by some as a shout-out to the worst aspects of the manosphere. It can also be read as a poke-in-the-ribs about the prevailing tendency to take everything too seriously.
“It’s really just about everybody being overly sensitive to just about everything and anything,” Ice Cube explains. “Maybe we could all just toughen up a little OK, and get along. Just let it go and be a little tougher already.”
For Ice Cube, the toughest challenge at the moment is coming up with a song selection that represents the many facets of his four-decade run, and compiling it into a hip-hop performance boasting arena-grade production and staging.
He promises that this is more than just a man on the mic show.
“It’s rewarding when you come up with a great flow to a show and people know you a little better when they are leaving than they did when they came in,” he said. “But we do call audibles once we are out there just like a quarterback, so if the play needs to shift to win the crowd, we do it. A song like Especially You really holds down that party sound of the ’80s that just can’t lose.”
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After the Truth to Power tour winds down in Houston, Texas on Oct. 17, Ice Cube says the final film in the Friday franchise will be taking up all of his bandwidth for a while. A followup to Man Up is also in the works.
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