Ice Cube has a reputation for being a gangster both on and offline — but despite criticism from those who say that he’s too old for the online clapbacks, the NWA pioneer says that he has a good reason for doing what he does.
In an interview with Memphis’ K97 FM, which aired on Sunday (July 16), the “No Vaseline” rapper explained why it was necessary to check the more offensive online trolls.
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“You know, sometimes, you gotta buss on’em,” he said. “You can’t just always have’em incoming, you know what I mean? Sometimes you gotta hit the corner and buss on’em.”
He continued: “When you wanna talk slick to me on Twitter, you can expect to get a response. Lettin’ stuff slide, lettin’ it ride — I mean, I know there’s a bunch of bots. Sometimes, you gotta slap a bot too, you know what I’m sayin’? You can’t take no stuff from no robots either. At the end of the day, it’s really just about standin’ up for yourself and not lettin’ these folks talk slick to you.”
Check out the interview below.
Ice Cube explains why he responds to Twitter trolls who "talk slick" to him https://t.co/52WCdDsvQrpic.twitter.com/saG3lN0HcU
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) July 17, 2023
Back in May, Ice Cube made headlines when a Twitter troll got riled up about his AI comments — and Cube wasted no time in shutting the troll down.
Cube took to Twitter to address a comment from a troll who called the rapper out for being hypocritical regarding AI in music but had no problem sampling.
The rapper quote tweeted their post and quickly pointed out the major difference between AI-inspired vocals and sampling music, explaining that the latter is “totally different” since samples are typically approved or denied by the song owners, whereas artificial vocals don’t need permission.
“Samples are approved or denied by the song owners. Totally different than taking a dead artist and making a new song they never approved and saying things they may not agree with. That’s evil and demonic to me,” Ice Cube tweeted.
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The troll’s comments were in reference to Cube’s appearance on the Full Send podcast, during which he expressed his displeasure with technology in Hip Hop, including autotune and AI, the latter of which he called “demonic.”
“I think AI is gonna get a backlash from real people, real organic people,” he continued. “I think artists need to go back to using their real voice, and making sure people know this is authentic, and not made from a computer.”
