Ice Cube - Raw Footage Review

Okay O'Shea. We've let you get away with a lot of things over the years, including a few awful comedy and sci-fi films and at least one half-assed compilation of songs FROM said films among others, but now you done did it. You're using words that don't exist in hip-hop slanguage whatsoever. That's fine if your first name's Earl, last name's 40 and you hail from Vallejo, California. Even he would reject PIE-ROW-CLASS-TICK though as it does not roll easily off the tongue. Sure it's an actual english word but I don't see rappers shoving each other out of the way to use it in song just because you spit it six months or so ago on "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It." Quite frankly it's a ridiculous sounding word and just because you put an intro on "Raw Footage" explaining what it means ("red hot lava mixed with saliva") doesn't get you a free pass. Why should we let Mr. Jackson get away with a word this absurd?...full text If being a gangsta is a young man's game, then what's an OG like Ice Cube to do? Stay angry, apparently. Throughout his eighth solo album, Cube augments his blustery flow with vendettas against politicians and corporations. One minute he's dreaming about becoming president on "Take Me Away," the next he's shouting "Fuck Viacom!" on the excellent, Public Enemy-indebted "It Takes a Nation." Eschewing big-name producers in favor of the uncluttered, cinematic funk of his N.W.A days, Cube spits some of his sharpest rhymes in years. "I been ballin' since the word 'ballin' ' been played out," he raps on the Jeezy-aided "I Got My Locs On," summing up this stage of his career: He may be the old guy now, but he still raps rings around the younger MC....full text Dealing with the good, the bad, and especially the ugly, Raw Footage is an appropriate title for Ice Cube's eighth album. Some kind of subtitle that mentioned the yin and yang of life would have made it perfect because the tracks here are as inclined to paradoxes as the man himself and offer just as few excuses. If you want insight into how a man justifies making family fun movies by day and hardcore rap by night, the only answer offered is that you grow up in this cruel world and you deal any way you know how, something that drives the great "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It." This key track may not be "fair and balanced," but it's honest and revealing as Cube embraces what he wants from the good -- a literate life that damns those who "read your first book in the penitentiary" -- and the commonly accepted bad as he attacks Oprah and everyone else who has a problem with hardcore rap using the "N" word....full text