Nobody’s denying the service Ice Cube did to hip hop culture but the new effort by the L.A. legend feels hollowed out, tired and patchy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Cube did political rap like nobody else. His greatness was easy to explain. His critique of modern society was concrete. Police brutality, racism, social injustice, ghettoization: all of it felt real, and that is why it resonated. Ice Cube went left wing as far as possible for a black poet in white America.
Concreteness is what is lacking in Man Down. Cube voices out a few of the grievances here and there, yet they are so abstract you wouldn’t know who they are aimed at. He is suddenly so shy to name all the deficiencies of our society in his lyrics, he acts like a little boy, wiggling and waggling, embarrassed to ask where a bathroom is.
He went so far to the right, he could mumble in an interview a few harsh words at major labels which pushed out political rap and wanted only hip hop for the dance floor and hip hop about riches, yet on his new CD he puts a dance floor track “Especially You” and a song with the telling title “Let’s Get Money Together.” He’s even toned down the cussing on most of his songs (a thing he would never do in the 1980s) to get more radio play. Is that the same Ice Cube who was never afraid to speak out the truth with the most appropriate words?
The song “Talkin' Bout These Rappers” provides the most striking example of Ice Cube’s degradation. He says: “Talkin' 'bout these rappers on the internet \ Google up these nuts, bitch, I been a vet \ I don't give a fuck what's on the internet.” Unfortunately, he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t act like a little girl himself with the lyrics like:
Look at that girl livin' frugal
Use her noodle, learn to Google
Fuck your cat and your poodle
And your science 'cause it's pseudo.
An artist who three decades ago spoke out for bigger truth and against deep injustices now dedicates a song to teenagers who thrash him on X. And that seems to him like the cruelest injustice in the world.
Sadly, the title Man Down is literally about Ice Cube himself. We lost him as an artist.
