Ice Cube Reminds Red Rocks Crowd He ‘Started This Gangsta Shit’ As He Pays Tribute To Eazy-E

    Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Too $hort and E-40 fully repped the West Coast on Tuesday (April 19) when they descended on the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado for the annual pre-420 On The Rocks show.

    With clouds of weed smoke creating a cannabis canopy over the entire venue, the nearly sold-out crowd was treated to dozens of Hip Hop classics such as Cube’s “Friday” and “Check Yo Self” to E-40’s “Sprinkle Me” and Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill A Man.”

    HipHopDX was on stage during Ice Cube’s explosive headlining set when he took a few moments to educate those who perhaps had never seen him before and reminded them he “started this gangsta shit.” He also included a tribute to his late N.W.A partner-in-rhyme Eazy-E.

    “I wrote my first hit song when I was 16 years old called ‘Boyz N Tha Hood’ with my partner Eazy muthafuckin’ E,” he told the audience. “Rest in peace! Now how many people out there, this is your first time coming to see your boy Ice Cube? How many people have seen Ice Cube a few times? Appreciate y’all.

    Method Man & Redman To Headline Annual '420 On The Rocks' Show At Historic Colorado Amphitheatre

    “To all my first timers, I bet what you was thinking when you bought your ticket, you said, ‘Hey this ticket costs a lot of money and I hope this muthafucka still can rap and shit. I hope he ain’t all movie’d out. He could be worrying about Big 3 basketball. No. I just wanna reassure you I started this gangsta shiiiiit. I got one thing to say to you — you better check yo’ self before you wreck yourself.” From there, of course, he and W.C. proceeded to do a flawless live rendition of “Check Yo Self” from 1992’s The Predator. 

    Elsewhere in Ice Cube’s set, he performed “Friday” and included a snippet from the 1995 cult film. “Whenever you see Ice Cube anywhere in life, it’s a muthafuckin’ Friday!” he said before going into the track. “And you know what we do on Fridays, right?”

    As for Cypress Hill, B-Real, Sen Dog, Eric Bobo and DJ Lord electrified the primarily stoned audience with songs such as “I Wanna Get High” and “Hits From The Bong,” certainly appropriate choices for the occasion at hand. Backstage, B-Real — who never took his sunglasses off (does he ever?) — was caught dancing along to “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugar Hill Gang as he waited to make his entrance.

    Red Rocks is preparing to do it all over again on Wednesday night (April 20) when they welcome Method Man, Redman, Pepper, The Underachievers and more for the official 420 On The Rocks celebration. Find tickets here. 

    10 thoughts on “Ice Cube Reminds Red Rocks Crowd He ‘Started This Gangsta Shit’ As He Pays Tribute To Eazy-E

    1. this fella was a latino and he would get so defensive about smoking weed as he did. he would bring down websites, take websites over with the politics of legalised weed as a protest, threaten to shoot people if they ever suggested to him to quit smoking dope and be a part of a lobby in california to legalise it. this man was going to kill people if they were ever against his habit. looking back on it he didn’t die or anything but a good story.

    2. Yeah. He didn’t though. Above the Law did it before he did. So did King Tee. Relax. L.A. motherfuckers still exist. Cornball Disney movie ass. We be clubbin ass.

      1. He still made gangsta rap more famous than it was. Nowadays anyone wanna think of gangsta rap they will definitely think of Cube

    3. I love Ice Cube’s music, but he didn’t start shit. Schoolly D and Just-Ice made the first gangsta themed raps, it was called reality rap back then. The first MC who labeled his music ‘gangsta’ was Ice-T. NWA was good tho, but they only commercialized the genre.

    4. Immediately after paying tribute to Eazy, Cube went on to perform “No Vaseline” three times in a row…

      1. He reps Eazy. He shouts out more than Dre. Behind the scenes he looks out for Lil Eazy. But I would love to see a Eazy E biopic executive produce by Cube. You cant get mad at kid shit. Diss or not they all mad money off it.

    5. Nice story yet of course Cube nor NWA started gangsta rap though they did play a major role in the growth of it. I thought Cube and B-Real had major beef from back in the day (??). I live in Denver and Red Rocks is located west of Denver in the foothills (Small Mountains), I would wager there were more Whites and Latinos at the show than Blacks, nothing wrong with who there fan base consisted of. I knows some girls out here who know Cube he cool, I don’t know him, but I ran into him in Vegas years ago we were staying at the same Hotel-Casino.

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