LAUGH NOW, CRY LATER - ICE CUBE
Gangsta godfather Ice Cube faces a nearly impossible mission with his first new record since 2000’s “War and Peace, Vol. 2.” He has to convince the quick-to-forget hip-hop community that the star of “Are We There Yet?” has any appreciable street cred left. (”I’m a gangsta, I know when I got it good,” he rhymes dismissively of his Hollywood success.) Surprisingly, a middle-aged Cube still packs a youthful punch when it comes to the gangsta tales (”They give us drugs and guns, then wonder why in the f— we thugs,” he preaches in menacing baritone throughout the record), and there are probably enough strong, stripped-down rhymes about herb (”Smoke Some Weed”) and women (”A Lotta That” with Snoop Dogg) to restamp his street approval. But as Cube makes clear in “Child Support,” money-and-stripper tracks are not exactly novel, and he’s much more potent shooting down bigger targets like the TV nation in “Until We’re Rich” and institutionalized racism in “Race Card.”–Billboard
