When I have to write about things that are important to me – like, oh, say my #3 MC of all-time (who happens to be coming to the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver courtesy of Live Nation, on April 11, so follow this link and buy some tickets or I’LL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE THROUGH THE INTERNET!!!) – it’s Eazy easy to go on and on. After all, there’s a lot of ground to cover.
This is a man that, along with Ice-T, put gangster rap in general, and South Central Los Angeles in particular, on the map, planting the West Coast flag firmly in the Terra Firma of Hip Hop. A man who, alongside three other titans of rap (and Yella), wore his (and a whole demographic’s) Attitude on his sleeve (both jacket and record), crafting one of the most important and incendiary albums of all-time with Straight Outta Compton. A man so dangerous he, with words alone, not only landed himself on my aforementioned Top Ten MC’s list, but also the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list! A man who flew the coop at the height of that success/notoriety, built without a single single on mainstream radio, and not only soared on his own, but fucked those that tried to fuck him with No Vaseline, one of the greatest diss records of all-time. A man with a face and voice that epitomize anger and rebellion, and confront the listener at every turn, every bridge and chorus. A man who parlayed that success to a powerful film debut, and classic album after classic album. A man who started all of those albums like a punch in the mouth. (Seriously, every one of those early releases – AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted / Kill At Will, Death Certificate, The Predator, Lethal Injection, Bootlegs & B-Sides – had a steroid-strong first song.) It must’ve been something in his blood. Even his cousins were dope! (In Del’s case, the world caught on. In Kam’s case, not so much.) Fuck, with his ESPN 30 For 30 documentary, Straight Outta L.A., he’ll even make you remember back to when the Raiders were cool, up until he ended their cool streak with two lines: “Stopped given’ juice to the Raiders / ‘Cause Al Davis…never paid us…“
I’m talking of course about the coldest motherfucker in Late-Eighties-Nuv’s Walkman, Ice Cube. With fellow fridge-mate Ice-Motherfuckin’-T riding shotgun on the B-side, Cube held down Side A of that 90 Minute black Maxell tape with ‘Cold Blooded’ written on it in red N.W.A. font. (Ice-T’s side had it in silver pen and mimicked the lettering on the Iceberg album cover. And YES, I’ve always been great at naming things.) CB was packed beep-to-beep with gangster shit, and I played that thing until the tape got so thin that the other side was bleeding through. Also, with each new album the two Ices released, I had to revise it. It didn’t matter that I had broken the little tabs out of the tape after Version 1. A little scotch tape, and there I was with a scribble-filled diagram in “Nuv’s War Journal” (my first rhymebook!), detailing which songs would get the axe for the new additions, and where to shuffle the ones that made the cut. Two songs that hopped up on CB in ’92 and ’93, respectively, and never budged again: Side A opener Trespass and Side B closer Last Wordz, two of the only (released) songs featuring both T and Cube. Fuck, I miss that tape… I mean, I have all the songs, both collecting dust on CD and in iTunes, but it’s not the same…
Anyway, I haven’t even scratched the surface. I could go on and on, but considering Cube himself is a wordsmith, I’ll just let him and Ice-T make the rest of my argument for me below, cool?
– Nuv
“Oh, yeah. It ain’t over motherfuckers…” Coming Soon: Cold Blooded [Side B] starring Ice-T… Until then, read Nuv’s first Ice Cube article here, and pick up your tickets to April’s show by clicking the pic below.
Oh, yeah, and: fuck Vanilla Ice.
