In April, Cube -- a consistently engaging screen presence ever since he made his debut as Doughboy in John Singleton's 1991 urban odyssey "Boyz N the Hood" -- officially takes over for Vin Diesel in the "XXX" action franchise.
"One thing I thought was missing in Hollywood was the black leading man who's an everyman," Cube says. "The only one we really got is Denzel. That was a niche that I knew I could fill."
"I'm not trying to take Eddie Murphy's spot and be the family man," Cube says. "I'm still gonna do hard-core movies."
(Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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From hated man to Everyman, from loner to lover. To Cube, his acceptance at the cineplex and in the hearts of some who once despised him makes perfect sense.
"If you really think about America, they love an outlaw," he says. "They love a guy who plays by his own rules. The records I did back in the day weren't done to pour salt in the wound or inject venom. They were done to inform, to bring to light things that aren't talked about enough. They weren't done out of being controversial. They were done because no one was saying it, nobody's gonna say it, and nobody's gonna say it like I'm gonna say it."
And he plans on saying it again. This summer, Cube will release a new album, which he's been working on with such hip-hop heavyweights as Lil' Jon, Pharrell Williams and Timbaland. It's his first collection of new material in almost five years, but he's not worried that his rhymes have rusted since he's gone Hollywood. He's still more comfortable in a recording studio than on a movie set.
"The microphone is my love," he says. "I'll always do that. Whether I sell records or not, I'll always do records. I'm always writing, always getting beats, always thinking of rhymes in my head. I'm always thinking about what people will respond to. That's always clicking. I'm a beat boy at heart."
He's also confident that his brand of rap -- rhymes and rhythms that are more concerned with grabbing you by the lapels than making you dance -- are about to come back in style.
"Rap goes through its eras," he says. "It started off with the DJ era. Then came bragging and boasting, talking about girls. Then you have Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash bringing 'The Message' and talking about survival. Then Run-DMC. And then Public Enemy comes, and right after them, here comes N.W.A., with what we call reality rap, before it was called gangsta rap. That's the title we gave it: reality rap." He says the "consciousness" in the music of current hip-hop kings Kanye West and the Roots will soon give way to a Cube revival.
"You know the phrase 'Sell no wine before its time,' " he says, smiling. "Well, you sell no rhymes before its time. We're coming to an era where my style of rap is coming back to the forefront."
Born in South Central Los Angeles to parents who worked at UCLA, Cube got into music as a teenager. When he was around 14, he met a DJ named Dr. Dre, another founding member of N.W.A. who's since gone on to become a white-hot producer. With the late rapper Eazy-E and others, Cube and Dre started recording ultra-violent diatribes that took what Public Enemy was doing (exposing the harsh realities of the urban black experience) to extreme levels.
"We weren't sure if anyone outside the neighborhood was going to respond to N.W.A.," Cube says. "We thought only people in South Central would understand what we were talking about. There was no example for us to see that this kind of group could make it. So I had a Plan B."
That plan was enrolling in an architectural drafting college in Phoenix. While he was at school, N.W.A., touring on the strength of a few singles, "was blowing up. I'd get calls from them, 'We're about to go to Chicago, then we fly to Atlanta.' And I'm asking, 'How much you all making?' 'They're gonna give us 10,000 a show.' And here I have six months of school left! That was the worst year of my life. My dreams were leaving me behind."
After getting his degree, Cube returned to L.A. in time to work on an Eazy-E solo album and then record N.W.A.'s 1989 landmark, "Straight Outta Compton." Cube split from the group later that same year, believing that management was cheating him out of money.
Next, a feud commenced between him and his former bandmates, a back-and-forth slamfest that played out on N.W.A.'s follow-up record, "Efil4zaggin," and Ice Cube's solo discs, 1990's "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted," which went gold, and 1991's "Death Certificate," which went platinum. The latter disc included such controversial tracks as "No Vaseline," perceived by some to be an anti-Semitic attack on N.W.A. manager Jerry Heller, and "Black Korea," in which Cube expressed his discontent with Korean-owned grocery stores: "Everytime I wanna go get a [expletive] brew / I gotta go down to the store with the two Oriental one-penny countin [expletives] . . . So pay respect to the black fist or we'll burn your store, right down to a crisp."
"The only thing I regret now [about the inflammatory raps] is not being as informed as I thought I was at the time I made the records," he says. "At 22, you think you know it all. That's the only thing I regret. Some things, some facts were a little skewed. I don't want to point [specific songs] out, 'cause all the fans that love the records, I don't want them to think I didn't mean what I said.
"Those songs are really time capsules. What I was feeling at this time, this hour, this year. It's cool to look back and listen to those records and remember who I was then, how I was then. That don't mean I'm not going to say something in the future that I'll probably regret, too."
Cube says that the movies and music are separate worlds, and he won't tone down his lyrics just because of his cleaned-up Hollywood image. "The bravado, the ego, the bragging, the boasting, being ironic: That is the foundation of what we're doing," he says. "To come out and say, I'm a household name, let me start doing albums like [DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince's comical] 'Parents Just Don't Understand' and try to be more pop is definitely the worst thing I could do. I'm coming out both guns blazing."
This time, though, there's a good chance the transformed man will be applauded for his efforts. After all, he's beloved now -- and he knows it.
"God bless America," Cube says, puffing on that stogie and flashing that killer smile.
