Ice Cube: Death Certificate

I only had Ice Cube’s first album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, on cassette, so I’ve missed out on Ice’s finest album for years now since my tape deck hit the skids. But this one, his second album, is a pretty close second and opens with a skit like most early-nineties rap albums should. And then it’s n-word mutherfucker this and bitch that and fuck America/whitey/Koreans that. Wow, what a dirty mouthed mutherfucker he is. Do you think George Clinton was thinking about gangsta rap when he wrote all those 70s classics? I mean, really, how many words do rhyme with the word “cracka?” Rapping about cops and drug dealers and shootings and all that other stuff he has now become too rich to hang with, Cube sounds raw and tough on this album. This is the shit that scared white America (and not Are We There Yet?) Misogynistic? Oh, you bet. I mean the guy has a little ditty called “Givin’ Up the Nappy Dugout” that’s hardly about the clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. I just like that he tries to rhyme “douche”(pronouncing it “dush”) with “Operation PUSH.” I honestly think this thing is more consistent than that sucka MC Dr. Dre’s biggie, but what the hell do I know about the hood? It is absolutely amazing that after releasing this album that mainstream young adult society has allowed this guy to survive.