187. Ice Cube, "AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted"

 


A sobering reminder that before he was an affable joker in movies like Are We Done Yet?, Ice Cube was a dangerous fucking individual.  On this album, which is great, incidentally, he is not just angry, but violently angry, and rightfully so.  The injustices that he carefully catalogs are many and profound, and Cube does a great job bringing them to light.  This is as much a manifesto and a call to arms - quite literally, in fact - as a banging fucking album.

Quite apart from the lyrics - more on which soon - this album is musically brilliant.  Produced by the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy's production team, the beats ripple with life and are stuffed with expertly chosen samples.  

"Endangered Species (Tales From the Darkside)" shows off both elements - the dense, thickly layered production, and Cube's angry, unforgiving delivery (Trigger Warning: basically everything):


Not for the faint of heart lyrically, and Cube isn't pulling any punches.  It's hard to imagine now, but this kind of gritty realism was revolutionary in 1990.  White America got its news abut Black America from TV and the news, and this was a way to clue people in on the fact that there was more going on than the Cosby show and "superpredators."  Ice Cube basically predicted the Rodney King riots by showing the relentless injustice the LAPD wreaked on the black community.  From the same song:

Every cop killer goes ignored
They just send another nigga to the morgue
A point scored- they could give a fuck about us
They rather catch us with guns and white powder
If I was old, they'd probably be a friend of me
Since I'm young, they consider me the enemy
They kill ten of me to get the job correct
To serve, protect, and break a niggas neck
Cause I'm the one with the trunk of funk
And 'Fuck tha Police' in the tape deck
You should listen to me cause there's more to see
Call my neighborhood a ghetto cause it houses minorities
The other color don't know you can run but not hide
These are tales from the darkside

This album came out more than 30 years ago, and Ice Cube is a grandfather now.  We'd like to think things have changed for the better.  Maybe they have.  But this compelling record is a document, a letter to the rest of America about how its most marginalized citizens are treated, and it stands up as that today.  Plus, it's just got some great jams.  

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I would think so.

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