Hip-hop legend Ice Cube has led a dual career as a controversial rapper and a wholesome film star. As one of the dominant lyrical forces behind N.W.A., he played a huge role in defining the sound, attitude, and ideology of West Coast gangsta rap. After leaving the group for financial reasons, he released a series of riveting, controversial solo albums, most notably his Bomb Squad-produced debut, 1990’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, before stepping back from hip-hop to concentrate on acting. In recent years, he’s emerged as a huge, bankable player as an actor, screenwriter, and producer in the world of family entertainment. Cube enjoyed enormous success with the raunchy Friday series, which he co-wrote, before winning over a sizable mainstream audience with 2002’s Barbershop and its sequel. The family hits kept coming, as Cube acted opposite a pair of misbehaving young people in Are We There Yet? and Are We Done Yet? Recently, he helped adapt Are We There Yet? for TBS as a vehicle for his friend and former bodyguard Terry Crews. Crews and Cube also co-star in Lottery Ticket, a winning new comedy-drama about a young man (Bow Wow) who wins a $370 million lottery, sparking a series of neighborhood shenanigans. The A.V. Club recently spoke with Cube about the upcoming N.W.A. movie, why gangsta rap allowed Ike Turner to be himself, and the Weinstein brothers doing some crackhead shit with the distribution of Cube’s Janky Promoters.
The A.V. Club: Lottery Ticket is a bit like Friday and Barbershop—a slice-of-life comedy with a nice neighborhood feel. Is that one of the things that appealed to you about it?
Ice Cube: Uh… Not really. But you know, we got young directors and writers who are fans of the Barbershop and Friday movies. So I understand the similarities in the writing and the shooting. I definitely want these dudes to express themselves, because we work with a lot of first-time directors. So that ain’t really what appealed to me the most. What appealed to me was just the upbeat neighborhood comedy. I think that’s straight in our wheelhouse. We’re one of the best out there that do this kind of movie. And you know, it’s smart business to do it.
AVC: You’ve said that you do more comedies than dramas because those are the films that get made and those are the films that make money. Why do you think that is?
IC: I think you know we went through a wave in the ’90s of some hardcore films. From Boyz N The Hood to Menace II Society and South Central. If you remember, there was always little incidents in those theaters. So I really think the theaters went to the movie studios and basically said they didn’t really want the hard dramas. [Laughs.] You know what I mean? So I think it was a shift of “Yo, let’s do more comedies.” It’s really no incidents, no issues, you know. People enjoy ’em, and they go see ’em all the time. So I think that just became the black Hollywood fare, so to speak.
AVC: Do you think there’s also an escapist element, where people would rather forget about their problems than confront them?
IC: Of course. I think on the consumer tip, of course. And that’s why I do more of these type movies. Simply because my records are hard. My records talk about what people are going through most of the time. And these movies—when people go out to the movies, they wanna escape the reality, or see an upbeat reality, you know, that’s not so drab. They respond to these movies and watch them over and over again.
AVC: Speaking of dramas, there’s going to be a N.W.A. movie. What’s your involvement in that?
IC: I’ve been working close with New Line and Tomica Wright, Eazy-E’s widow, on just kind of getting our ducks in a row on this movie. Right now, we’re going into the scriptwriting phase. It’s a lot of outlines. What’s tricky is, it’s five different stories that have to come together and make one linear movie. We can’t put everything in there, or it turns into a miniseries. We’re trying to figure out what stays, what goes, what the movie’s gonna be.