Ice Cube has called bullshit on the claims that his seminal group, N.W.A., brought destruction to the Hip Hop genre.
Taking to Twitter on Thursday (September 28), the “No Vaseline” rapper responded to a fan’s claim that his music brought nothing but trouble to Black and Latino communities.
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“Bullshit,” he wrote. “Crack was in the neighborhoods a decade before gangsta rap. In the 70s they called it freebase. So was heroine, weed, Mollys, gangbanging, drive bys, pimping and hoing, dropping out of school, young girls getting pregnant, cussing and the using the word N-gga. It was all here before NWA.”
Check out the tweet below.
The fan’s claim echoed Special Ed’s recent, similar claim about Ice Cube and N.W.A., which he made while he was a guest on Drink Champs on September 16.
“N.W.A. came out, and their shit was hardcore — and I said, ‘see, they can say what they want,’” he said on the popular podcast. “But the label didn’t want to market me that way. And I had hard shit.”
He continued: “They didn’t want that. They wanted commercial music. We all wanted to be original. Now, it’s a bandwagon effect. Now, it’s all about cloning. These guys […] ushered in the age of destruction.”
But KXNG Crooked went on TMZ Live on Monday (September 25) to dispute these claims.
“Let me talk to you, my brother,” he began, respectfully. “We did not live in a utopia until Straight Outta Compton dropped. Straight Outta Compton is a masterful, street-conscious album. That’s not glorification. We gotta really listen to it. JAY-Z said, ‘do you really listen to it, or do you skim through it?’”
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He continued: “This destruction has always been here since we touched this soil, and art imitates life, my brother. That’s what happens. Go read The Destruction of the Black Civilization. I don’t think NWA brought the destruction age. I think they highlighted it. That was it.”
On the music end of things, Ice Cube has just announced his first solo album in five years, Man Down.
During a conversation with Chuck D’s RAPstation, the California native revealed that he’s adding the finishing touches to his next album and that it will be ready for release very soon.
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“I’m working on an album that hopefully I can finish in the next couple of weeks and schedule to put it out,” he said. “I’m digging what I’m doing. The name of the record is called Man Down, and, you know, it’s a pretty good record. It like it. It’s dope.”
He also took the opportunity to reflect on his career and how it has shaped the person he is today: “It’s a blessing, really. For one, I made a promise to myself when I got in this business that I wouldn’t let it change who I am as a person, so I was always willing to let the chips fall where they may and not worry about ‘I can’t do this or my career will be over’ or ‘if I do this, will this happen?’
“When you broke when you’re starting off, going back to being broke is not an issue. That’s not motivation, like ‘I’m going to be broke again, let me bow down to this bullshit.’ No.”
