![the predator ice cube the predator ice cube](https://rarerecords.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ICE-CUBE-The-Predator-2.jpg)
But Jackson insists those songs were an end in themselves. “We Had To Tear This Mothafucka Up” includes a kind of paint-by-numbers guide to looting-get the laptop, hit the Foot Locker, grab the Molotov cocktail and so on. It also seems counter-intuitive that the songs were not intended to inspire action. Even when the lyrics were technically fiction.
![the predator ice cube the predator ice cube](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JBKh2ECcwFA/maxresdefault.jpg)
As Jackson himself says, his songs never strayed far from the truth. But the Los Angeles riots that followed the verdict had little to do with non-violent protest those six days were the most violent period of race-related unrest in America since the Civil War. Of course, The Predator has no shortage of fever-dream fantasies about finding the LAPD officers and the jury and making them pay for the beating and the verdict. The old song had new life as people searched for music that captured their anger in those moments.Ĭalling the songs pure fantasy is, it seems, a kind of revisionist history. Two years later, in the wake of the Mike Brown killing and the lead-up to the grand jury’s decision, the page lit up again. Two years ago, when George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, the YouTube page for The Predator’s Rodney King verdict revenge fantasy “We Had To Tear This Mothafucka Up” came to life with commenters looking for an outlet for their outrage. The same themes underpin Jackson’s earlier albums, but rarely as poignantly as on The Predator-an album of reaction rather than prediction, equal parts journalism and hip-hop fantasy that captured a specific moment in America.Įxcept, those songs have refused to stay buried in the memory of racial strife in the 1990s.
![the predator ice cube the predator ice cube](https://icecube.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/predator.jpg)
That decision, and the days of deadly rioting that followed, fueled Jackson’s most successful album, The Predator, which ripped the verdict and the King beating as just one snapshot of a far wider culture of systemic subjugation of black people in America. That feeling Jackson describes is the same one he felt in 1992, when a jury in Los Angeles found the four police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney King not guilty of assault and excessive force. “I feel the same way: mad as fuck,” he says. He says he doesn’t remember precisely where he was when he heard about the grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson in the Mike Brown killing-he suspects his wife told him the news-but the feeling was a familiar one. It is his most serious album, though, as well as his last important album of the '90s.Jackson is in Australia at the moment, finishing an Ice Cube tour that spanned the first half of December. Given this, it's not one of Ice Cube's more accessible albums despite boasting a few of his biggest hits. 2," you won't find any humor here, just tension. Besides the halfhearted wit of "Gangsta's Fairytale, Pt. In fact, the darkness is so pervasive that the wit of previous albums is absolutely gone. The Predator is a grim album, for sure, more so than anything Ice Cube would ever again record. By the time you get to the album-concluding "Say Hi to the Bad Guy" and its mockery of policeman, hopelessness prevails. However, the next song, "We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up," eclipses the relief with yet more calamity. It's a truly beautiful moment, a career highlight for sure.
![the predator ice cube the predator ice cube](https://images.vice.com/noisey/content-images/article/ice-cubes-the-predator-the-album-that-unfortunately-stays-relevant/ice-cube-the-predator-copy.jpg)
It's only during the aforementioned "It Was a Good Day" that Ice Cube somewhat alleviates this album's smothering tension. He found a relevant episode to magnify with the riots, and he doesn't hold back, beginning with the absolutely crushing "When Will They Shoot?" The song's wall of stomping sound sets the dire tone of The Predator and is immediately followed by "I'm Scared," one of the many disturbing interludes comprised of news commentary related to the riots. On both AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990) and Death Certificate (1991), he took aim at society in general: women, whites, Koreans, even his former group members in N.W.A. Granted, Ice Cube's previous albums had been far from gentle, but they were filled with a different kind of rage. Even the album's most laid-back moment, "It Was a Good Day," emits a quiet sense of violent anxiety. Ice Cube infuses nearly every song, and certainly every interlude, with the hostile mood of the era. Released in the aftermath of the 1991 L.A.