Ice Cube Bio
O'Shea Jackson, called Ice Cube, is an American rapper, actor, and filmmaker. His lawless lyrics on N.W.A's 1988 album Straight Outta Compton led gangsta rap's outbreak. Yet his solo albums of 1990 and 1991 offer iconic political rap. In 1991 and 1995, entering film, he starred in Boyz n the Hood and cocreated Friday.
His first rap group, C.I.A., formed in 1986. In 1987, with Eazy-E and Dr. Dre, he formed a pioneering gangsta rap group, N.W.A. Its lead rapper, Cube wrote some of Dre's and most of Eazy's lyrics on Straight Outta Compton. A landmark that shaped West Coast rap's first identity apart from East Coast rap, this album introduced lyrics extremely violent, threatening to attack abusive police and innocent civilians alike, lyrics that redrew boundaries. Leaving N.W.A in late 1989 via monetary dispute with its management by Eazy-E and by Jerry Heller, Cube teamed with New York artists and launched a solo rap career.
His first two solo albums, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted in 1990 and Death Certificate in 1991, were also forceful and controversial, criticizing whites, blacks, women, gay men, the Jewish man Jerry Heller, and Korean store owners. Overall, the lyrics frame ideas of black struggle and black nationalism in a street reformulation of Nation of Islam ideology, initiating recurrent accusations that Ice Cube is antisemitic. Swiftly certified Platinum, these two albums, especially the latter, widely esteemed as sociopolitical criticism, are cited by later rappers as key influences, and place Cube on lists of the greatest rappers.
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