It’s Friday night and the young New York working class has milled into a small venue on the Lower East Side. The crowd is a cultural mix of young and old Hip Hoppers. The scene isn’t fancy or friendly. Everyone seems like they’re in the mood for some gangsta shit. The local deejay takes a break from spinning the top 100 and introduces the man of the hour: west coast boss of all bosses, Ice Cube. Fans cheer and rush the stage as he and long-time friend and partner-in-rhyme, WC, rip through recent cuts off of Laugh Now, Cry Later and his latest album Raw Footage.

Cube aggressively commands the stage and electrifies his audience. As he surfs farther back in time through his catalog of classics, the wave of the crowd grows into a frenzied tsunami. The venue quakes as fans flow word-for-word with Cube on “Today Was a Good Day” and finally erupts with “Straight Outta Compton.” That’s where it all started. 1980s. N.W.A. Los Angeles. That’s the Cube they first loved and the primary reason they ride for him to this day.

Note: The crunching noise is coming from a child eating chips in Cube's entourage. And who asks anybody from Cube's camp to please be quiet?

HipHopDX catches up with the rap icon, fresh off an international promo-tour earlier that morning. He talks about flexing his independent muscle in the rap game and why the music aint to blame for the world’s ills.

HipHopDX: What was the statement you were trying to make with the music video "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It" [click to view] ?
Ice Cube: I wanted to make a video that was raw and uncensored. It was strange 'cause I had done so many videos over my career and you always gotta censor yourself and you always gotta try and think about "Will they play this?" and it was cool just to do a video where I didn't have to worry about that. I used whatever footage I felt should be in there. It was the dirty version. We never did a clean version. Freedom. Man...finally I can do things the way I envisioned instead of doing them the way some programmer likes it.

DX: The video was actually straight raw footage, real life events. Was that the inspiration for this new album Raw Footage?
Ice Cube: In a way. Not really the events, but the hypocrisy. I wanted to show all the stuff that was going on in the world that didn't have nothing to do with the hood, nothing to do with rap and show that these problems in the world are bigger than gangster rap music. A lot of people want the Crips and Bloods to stop fightin' in South Central, but the Israelis and Palestinians can't stop fighting, so how the Crips and Bloods gon' stop fightin'? If you can't stop it on a big major scale, how you gon' stop it on a small scale?

DX: This is solo album number eight. That's a huge accomplishment to still be relevant today. You made a comment about being "loved by the grandmamas and the babies." How does it feel on the eighth go-round?
Ice Cube: It feels real good in a lot of ways man because it's an independent record. We had a lot of success with Laugh Now, Cry Later [click to read]. We're excited to get another crack at it and just the fact that I did the record how I wanted to do it and not how people maybe suggest [I] should do it. When you're doing records, you got a lot of people in the mix sometimes - you know from the record companies to the promotion team, to the radio team; everybody got something to say on the kind of records you make. Here at Lench Mob Records, we ain't got all that. We just got our team dedicated to push and promote whatever I do in the studio.

DX: With John Murphy (All About The Benjamins) doing the score and Keith David's (First Sunday) narration, listeners can pick up a more cinematic vibe on Raw Footage...
Ice Cube: I always want to make the record feel like a complete album and not just a bunch of songs linked together. I want the record to feel like it's telling a story in its sequence and skits in between. I wanted this record to feel big. I knew I wasn't going to do a lot of skits but when I did 'em, I wanted you to feel 'em. Keith David adds that continuity throughout the record. He was a voice that's distinct and powerful. I'm glad I'm able to use him on a record like this. John Murphy is probably one of the most versatile score guys in the business right now.

DX: Tony Draper and I recently had a conversation with respect to Nas' new album. It was originally titled Nigger [click to read]. He had to eventually change it prior to release mainly due to label pressure. The sentiment in the air is that Ice Cube can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Is that due to you presently being an independent artist or because of your history and reputation in the entertainment business?
Ice Cube: Hopefully, it's a bit of both but being independent allows me to do what I wanna do without having to bow down to any pressure from any label… I feel an artist should be able to present his art how he feel it. The record is distributed through EMI, but that's all they do is distribute it. There's nobody that has the power to tell me no. That's a big factor, and it gets political sometimes in this game and it's just a shame. An artist should be able to present his art how he feel it. But it didn't affect the record [Nas' Untitled]. It sold very well - still selling, and Nas is on tour so I think he...even naming it that and getting it snatched away it, might've showed how big Nas and that record is. Continued on page 2 »