Atlanta. The Fox Theatre. June 4, 2013. Ice Cube takes his turn to rock on the Kings of the Mic tour after De La Soul and Public Enemy, just before LL Cool J closes them out. There’s no Jheri curl, but the LA fitted and the Dickies uniform—now with an Ice Cube name tag (as if anyone needs to be reminded who he is)—are intact. But just in case the crowd has forgotten Ice Cube, the MC, the big video screen behind him flashes images of his early days, with N.W.A, as well as solo.
Months before this one-night tour stop, Cube was in Atlanta for a more extended stay, in an environment more familiar to him these days: a movie set. Today, music is more his hobby than his job. He’s long graduated from the stage to the big screen. Counting his movie debut as Doughboy in John Singleton’s Oscar-nominated Boyz n the Hood, whose name originated from the classic song Ice Cube wrote for N.W.A leader Eazy-E, the City of Angels native has been in 30 films, with his next three (including an animated work) in the crop of 2014 releases.
Equally as important, he’s also produced more than a dozen of them: the Friday franchise, Barbershop 2, Are We There Yet? and its sequel, All About the Benjamins and, of course, The Players’ Club. And in Atlanta, he was back at it again, pulling double duty, costarring with comedian Kevin Hart and producing Ride Along, a buddy comedy about Atlanta cop James (Cube) who brings his sister’s security guard boyfriend Ben (Hart), into his fold to scare him away from the profession and his family.
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“It was a dope project,” he says of Ride. “I’m working with Tim Story again after his success with Barbershop and the success he’s had with his other films [the Fantastic Four franchise, Think Like a Man],” explains Cube, who had been developing the project with his Cube Vision team over at New Line Cinema before Universal stepped up. Producer Will Packer, whose credits include Think Like a Man, Takers and Stomp the Yard and whom Cube says “is one of the dopest producers working on this level,” also jumped on board.
For Cube, John Leguizamo, of whom he says, “I’ve been waiting to do a movie with ever since he was ‘Benny Blanco from the Bronx’ [in Carlito’s Way,]” and Laurence Fishburne, with whom he starred in Boyz and Singleton’s third film Higher Learning, “make the film popcorn-worthy.”
But, still, it’s no secret that, in a Cube film, laughter typically rules. “I have good luck working with comedians,” he says (with a chuckle). After all, Friday, which he created, produced and starred in, helped seal Chris Tucker’s Hollywood future, and turned his Friday After Next costars Mike Epps and Katt Williams into bankable comedy stars. This time around, it’s very different, since Hart, who is coming off Grudge Match with Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone, and will appear in the black-cast remake of About Last Night with Michael Ealy, Regina Hall and Joy Bryant, as well as the sequel to the blockbuster Think Like a Man coming in June, not to mention his successful BET comedy, Real Husbands of Hollywood, hardly needs a career boost.
“I wanted to work with Kevin Hart,” Cube admits. “He’s funny as hell. He’s one of the funniest guys around right now.” With Hart, Cube felt that “all the pieces were in place to make a funny movie [and] to try to establish another franchise.” And, shortly after filming was completed, Universal had reportedly already signed up for the sequel.
Perhaps his choice of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, which started with Next Friday, has also factored into the success of the films he stars in and produces. “It was just only right. We had a black movie, we had a holiday for a black man and it worked,” he deduces. “Ride Along is coming out on that date. It’s perfect.”
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So while most artists have mastered the show, Cube has clearly conquered the business, too. But he didn’t do it by enrolling in film school at USC or taking acting classes at Yale. Instead, his formula for success is quite simple: “You gotta have principles,” he says. “Before the art, before the money, you gotta make a vow to yourself to do what you please, to do what you are into and not to be pushed into anything you ain’t down with,” he further explains. “So making that pact with myself, I’m kind of able to go for the art when it’s time to go for the art and go for the money when it’s time to go for the money. It’s ‘show business,’ both words; and you have to be serious about both.”
Early in his career, when he walked away from N.W.A while openly criticizing their manager Jerry Heller for exploitation, many thought he was crazy. Time, however, has vindicated him, revealing him to be the wiser man. In fact, he’s totally in control now, even driving the long-awaited N.W.A film that Heller, ironically, got started.
“I think Jerry Heller put out a book, and he went to New Line trying to get that book made into an N.W.A movie,” he recalls. “And we were like, ‘Whoa, he doesn’t even know what’s going on. He’s just a greedy-ass manager. He doesn’t know our story.’ So we just told them that you’re making the movie with the wrong people. If y’all really serious, let us come in. And then I got with Ren, Yella and Dr. Dre, and we started putting our own movie together.”
This, of course, is a new script to the now tragic cliché of black artists failing to control their own destiny in the end. “It felt like this is what we’ve been fighting for since day one,” Cube shares, with a lift in his tone, totally aware of what controlling his pioneering gangsta rap group’s biopic means historically. “Nobody should tell that story but us,” he says.
“Nobody was there to know how [our] neighborhoods created that group, and then [how] the group changed those neighborhoods. So there are a lot of different dynamics that need to be [shown]. You shouldn’t have a penthouse view of what happened; you got to have a basement view,” he says adamantly.
And there is no rush. “We’re committed to putting together a hell of a movie. No matter how long it takes. It’s really all about the finished product,” says Cube, who adds that they’ve already gotten started. In the meantime, he will deliver 22 Jump Street, the follow-up to 2012’s surprise hit 21 Jump Street, based off the hit 1980s show, also starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, in June.
Starting out, he says he only wanted “recognition” and “just for people to know my name, to know that I can rap.” Today, with the West Coast’s latest greatest Kendrick Lamar being universally embraced, that seems like an easy feat. Back then, however, it was far from a done deal.
“Coming from L.A., it was a total uphill battle. From my vantage point, it was like being at the bottom of Mount Everest, looking up at Run-DMC, Eric B. & Rakim, the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J and most of what Def Jam was doing. Looking up at all of that and being a fan of that, [but] never knowing I could be a part of it,” he says quite seriously.
“[That all changed] as I started to get more and more involved in music. From carrying Dr. Dre’s records up at the clubs, I started to see more and more opportunities presenting themselves,” he shares. Actually he credits using camcorders to craft N.W.A videos for setting him off on his successful Hollywood path. And pretty much like a movie script, things came very full circle in October, when it was announced that LL Cool J and N.W.A were among the nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which added Public Enemy to its roster last spring.
“I think the group as a whole has certainly influenced modern pop culture in a lot of ways other than music,” he says, with no arrogance in his voice. “So it’s kind of only right, because N.W.A is a group that changed the game in a lot of arenas.” After all, it did give us Ice Cube.
Photography: Todd Mcmillian / Universal Pictures