Interview with Ice Cube and Harvey Kubernik 

Copyright 1993, 2021 Harvey Kubernik 

Growing up in Los Angeles, Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson) treasured the music of Parliament/ Funkadelic, Rick James and James Brown.  

In 1983, at fourteen, he was writing his own raps, and later, after catching an Ice-T show for the first time, he turned pro and became Ice Cube. 

He was a founding member of N.W.A., who on December 17, 2015 was inducted along with Deep Purple, Chicago, Cheap Trick and the Steve Miller Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.   

 Ten years, six million albums, three Number One hits, two movies and three screenplays later, Ice Cube has established himself as wordsmith, film director and producer, and entrepreneur.

    In January 2017, Ice Cube and entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz announced their new 3-on-3 (BIG3) basketball league. Team rosters include former NBA players and international talent. In April 2021 the BIG3 website announced plans for the BIG3 fourth season that will begin July 10, 2021 at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

    The league’s 2021 season will have ten weeks of action with players competing in Las Vegas and one of the country’s premier HBCUs, Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans. Each game will be broadcast live, with the majority airing exclusively nationwide on CBS Television Network, with all CBS broadcasts also streaming live on Paramount+.

   “After a challenging year, we can’t wait to have our players back on the court for the best BIG3 season yet – where the world’s top competitors come together on one court and provide fans with an unmatched entertainment experience. We are excited to bring the BIG3 to two basketball rich cities and we know our players will put on a show,” said BIG3 Co-Founders, Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz. 

   “We always want to partner with the best, so we are thrilled to team up once again with CBS to showcase the BIG3 game with first-class production.” said BIG3 CEO, Chris Hannan. “We are happy to have two great host cities in Las Vegas and New Orleans for our fourth season, bringing our fast paced and one-of-a-kind game back to fans across the country,” 

Lethal Injection, his fourth full-length album was initially released in December 1993 via Lench Mob Records and Priority Records after departing rap super group N.W.A. in 1989. It was recorded in studios at Echo Sound, Skip Saylor and Westlake.  Album production was done by QDIII, Sir Jinx, Madness 4 Real, D’Mag, and Ice Cube.  Lethal Rejection was reissued with bonus tracks in 2003.   

In 1993 I drove with my pal Paul Body to Ice Cube’s office in the Crenshaw District area which brought back memories.  I grew up in the neighborhood, went to elementary school near 39th and Crenshaw, also kindergarten before then at Coliseum Street School, and learned how to swim in the late fifties at the Susan Miller Dorsey High School pool located in the Baldwin Hills/Leimert Park/Crenshaw and West Adams community. Years later I graduated from nearby West Los Angeles College in Culver City.

In the early ’70s I went to see George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic at Maverick’s Flat, after hearing “(I Wanna) Testify” on KDAY and KGFJ AM. That station was one of my sound temples. 

On the way to meet Ice Cube I drove past a room where, as The Total Experience venue, I saw Bobby “Blue” Bland deliver a spell bounding show in the late 1980s. 

Ice Cube’s recordings impact me with a found sound the way another neighborhood product, Arthur Lee of Love, did decades ago, and the ’60s Nik Venet-produced LPs of singer-narrator Lou Rawls, with his trademark monologues and tune intros. 

This interview was originally published unedited in HITS magazine and later in New Times.

Q: I’m going to ask you some questions about process and content. The literary aspect of what you do. 

A: OK. (Grins). Cool. This should be interesting.

Q: Did local AM or FM radio have any impact on your life growing up? KGFJ? KROQ? KDAY?

A: I bought records. I listened to KGFJ and I listened to KDAY because I was into funk and all that back then. And they would play a lot of it. Radio turned me off once I learned the game, and it wasn’t a people’s station. It was an advertising station. You don’t have a lot of rap stations because advertisers, or whoever, feel that these young kids don’t have the money to buy products. (Rap) still sells tons and tons of records. (But) the advertisers can dictate to the program directors what they shouldn’t play.

Q: How does your specific writing process work and how are the lyrics and music fusion developed? The process of creation? 

A: When I first started out – ‘cause I had paper – what happened was I lost one of my rhymes, and it made me nervous. Now everything I do I put in the computer, so I’ll always have it and be able to look back.

Q: Do you do a lot of revision of the lyrics and raps before they are mixed in with the music?

A: No. As a matter of fact, I never do revision. Never. When I write it out, that’s it. I will probably revise one line as I go along, but I never revise it after I finish a verse. It’s there. It’s on paper. I get an idea just by living. I get an idea that has never been on wax before.

Q: When you record, do you use a lyric sheet when you put the vocal down or do you do it from memory to a track?

A: A lot of times, my whole album is written before I get one track that I’m gonna use. All the words are done. I do the vocals with headphones. I get one track that I’m gonna use. All the words are done. I do the vocals with headphones. Sometimes it’s hard to remember all of the words, especially when we are doing a live show. I’ve done so many rap songs that sometimes I use a phrase and it ends up in two songs. Like, I’m doing “Steady Mobbin”, and I might use a phrase from another song if I’m not careful, and I’ll go off into that other song.

Q: On Lethal Injection you served as executive producer, and co-produced every track, and were really involved in the album’s dense and complex soundscape. What is the advantage of employing a variety of producers, such as Sir Jinx, Qdill, and Ladylaw as co-producers and collaborators?

A: Once I get a track that far, I come in with my sugar and spice…It’s always been that way because some producers, when they make money, they get lazy. Before, they were just a kid with a drum machine: no car, no nothing. All they did was good music. Now, they get a little money, a car, they got women who know them. You know what I’m saying?  They get a little lazy. See, I don’t give any of my producers seniority. It’s whoever has the best music. I could meet you right now, and if you have a track I like, I will use you over a guy I’ve had for four or five years. That keeps everybody honest and everybody on their toes. Keeps it fresh. None of my records sound like the last one. I approach them all the same. Rap is always moving. If you stay away too long, I think you lose a little of your punch, because there are so many people saturating the market. A lot of black kids feel that this is the only way they can be somebody, so they are always brushing up on their skills, you know. It’s not like a singing record, like a Stevie Wonder. With rap, (because) it’s so young, you always have to stay on your toes and always come out there, or you might get lost in the shuffle.

Q: Can you run down some of the tracks on Lethal Injection?

A: With “Really Doe”, I wanted to do a hard-core back-to-the-underground street song after the success of “It Was A Good Day” and “Check Yo Self”. I wanted to let everybody know as long as they try to push me to pop, I’ll never go that way. I just say, ‘Let me do beats and rhymes’, and I think it worked.

Q: Why is it that “Cave Bitch” has emerged as the most controversial song on the latest collection? Did you know that you were gonna push some buttons when you recorded it?

A: Of course. Because people, instead of tryin’ to be themselves, they always try to be so goddamn politically correct: ‘That’s the way I felt, but it’s not the right thing to say.’ But who dictates what’s the right thing or the wrong thing to say? I wrote it in a hotel. I was in a lobby and it was clear and empty, and I was just hangin’ around. I was talkin’ to a couple of guys, you know. And one of the guys said that the only way to make it, to get that extra oomph after you get there, is to get white women – ‘That’s the only way you can make it.’ He started naming athletes and entertainers, and I went, ‘Goddamn! Wait a minute. That’s not the only way you can make it.’ Then I started talking to a couple of other people who had the same philosophy of ‘Once you get successful, you have to find a blonde white girl to be your wife or girlfriend.’ It blew me away. I had to do a song to erase that philosophy. I did it earlier, in a way, with “Horny Lil’ Devil”.

Q: Did you have any reservations about identifying black men who are married to white women?

A: They’re public domain, just like I am. Once you go on the television or go out there, you consider yourself a celebrity. Why can’t I use him?; why can’t he use me?

Q: In your recent Los Angeles Times interview about “Cave Bitch”, you said, ‘It hits at black men who chase after white women. When people see a strong black man, like Charles Barkley or Barry Bonds, with white women, what does that say to the community? It says that to make it – or when you make it – you have to have a white woman on your arm.’

A: I had to do “Cave Bitch” to see if the critics who don’t complain when I use the word “bitch” about a black girl will complain when I talk about a white girl.

Q: “Bop Gun” features a drop in voice, George Clinton. It’s a remake of the P-Funk classic, “One Nation Under A Groove”.

A: It’s about giving respect to the man who started it all.

Q: I really enjoy the skits you drop inside the recordings, the spoken wordplays. I know their fusion is to acknowledge the comedy records you’ve heard. Are the skits written in advance or done spontaneously?

A: Sometimes they are spur-of-the-moment, ya know. Sometimes I want to do a skit. Like with “Death Certificate” and the funeral. Okay. Doin’ the skit on “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”. The intro. That was spur-of-the-moment. Now it’s more planned out. We wrote down what we wanted to hear and what we wanted to see and picture. 

Q: Is that why the new recording begins with “Mr. White” being taken out by a gunshot?

A: Yeah…I think all my intros are different. Some of them have there own little meaning to ‘em. I think a string thing about all four of the albums I’ve done is the intros. It’s like, ‘What is Cube gonna do next?’

Q: It’s also quite obvious that, after listening to your catalogue, the tunes, skits and intros are very comedic. Even Amos & Andy are part of the reference parade. Is it because there are a lot of beats and sound effects in the grooves that a lot of the media overlook the comedic aspect of your work?

A: Definitely. The media is preoccupied with anger. And you mentioned that my records could be stocked in the comedy section in the stores as well. I think (the media) are so paranoid about me distributing information, ‘cause to distribute information is a powerful tool. And they are so caught up on the “Death Certificate” album – on “Black Korea” and “Look Who’s Burning” – they miss a lot of the humor. In a lot of gansta rap there is a lot of humor. Because, being part of the neighborhood, you know, you can get past if you are hard or if you are funny. You can be the gangsta or the joker in the neighborhood. And people will always like you or get along with you. What you have now is rappers combining them. 

Q: A lot of people have missed that point. 

A: Definitely. Humor is a natural part of hard-core rap.

Q: On the new recording, historical figures such as Emmett Till and Harriet Tubman appear in the lyrics, as well as Louis Farrakhan. Is it a conscious effort on your part with the lyrics to bring specific and influences forward? In a way, you are serving as a messenger of information. Is it true that you never learned anything in school about the contributions of black Americans, except for George Washington Carver?

A: Oh yes. I think that’s what keeps us in the dilemma that we are in, because we don’t know what’s goin’ on, and a lot of black kids who are in the mix or in the middle of everything, still don’t know what’s goin’ on. Take a quarterback on the football field. He should know what’s goin’ on in the game more than anybody else. But he has to call upstairs to the booth, to a coach who can see the bigger picture. That’s the role that I’m playing for the guys who are out here and in the mix, ya know. I have been all over the world, so I have a broader view of what’s goin’ on, so I’m able to relate. Just like the man in the booth to the quarterback.

Q: But you never learned about Emmett Till or Harriet Tubman in school?

A: Not at all. I understand that the school system is there to condition you to be a worker. The school has no emphasis on just knowledge, but it’s knowledge for profit. ‘If you can do this job, you can make a lot of money.’ You know what I’m sayin’? I understand what school is set up to do. It doesn’t anger me, because I understand what it is there for. So, what I do is take what I learn outside of school and apply it to my music. Not in a preachy way or in a corny way, but in a real way, so that the kids can relate to it and it doesn’t sound like I’m tellin’ kids what to do, ya know? I want the kid to look up and see who Emmett Till Or Harriet Till are. Because if America would admit her guilt…just put it out on the table, they’ll find the black community is, ‘Okay, we forgive you as long as we can start clean and straight from here.’ But America doesn’t want to do that at all. She just wants us to bury the past, but she won’t bury the past at all. You know what I mean? It’s sorta awkward. I’m just tryin’ to enlighten everybody who listens to my records. 

Q: In the song “Enemy,” you picked 1995 as the bottom of the ninth inning moment. 

A: I chose that year because I see everything coming against her. (America) has an inner rot from all the cities. Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. Weather is a factor. Fire, hurricanes, floods. It took me the longest time to complete that song. Eight months. 1995 to me is a very critical year. Just the mathematics seem so right, and the time seems so right. You can hear things like, ‘We want to bring the National Guard into D.C.’ All these types of things. ‘We want to put prisoners away and throw away the key.’ ‘We’re closing this army base but we’re not closing it down.’ And if you look how America is setting up the black and the Chicano people on the news, ‘Look at our problem” If you really run this parallel to what the Germans did to the Jews, pre-holocaust: ‘Look at our problem…this is why you can’t do this…look at the black problem…they don’t want to work…you can’t even visit America without being killed.’ Just kind of setting up a tone for the world. And in America, and I don’t put anything past her, because she has done a lot of evil things, but if America wanted to eliminate this problem, or scapegoat this problem, the whole world would have to see why. You see what I’m sayin’? News, everyday, ya know. Just laying it out simple and plain. I think 1995 is the beginning of that. There’s no doubt in my mind.

Q: What do you think of the organizations and the individuals who are attacking gangsta rap or your recorded views? Blaming the violence that is reflected in your words and music.

A: Not at all. If gangsta rap stopped today, we would still have the same problems, so why start at the bottom? You have to start at the top and work your way down.  People like (anti-rap music organizer) Calvin Butts…the reason they were set to attack us was,: What is the only form of music that can sell copies without going through any so-called media? Rap. Without magazines, without going on TV, without doin’ a video. Rap music is the only form of music that can distribute information uncensored, in a way. More than any other form of music, besides probably heavy metal. ‘Cause people can catch on to a heavy metal group and they don’t care who play it. They’ll get with it.
Now, that’s dangerous to the powers that be. Rap does these volumes of records and it presents more problems for the powers that be. They say, ‘How do we stop this? Now, do we attack it?’ Which they have. They’ve come out themselves and attacked the music. NWA, (Ice-T’s) “Cop Killer”. All the way down the line. That’s not working. The kids are still buying the music. ‘What we can do is turn their community on them and make the music seem unpopular.’ That’s happened to us time and time again. That always happened in a time when the kids believed the parents were on the right track. But now, in 1994, the kids believe the parents are not on the right track. So…who knows and who tells it? The rappers. So the rappers become the heroes over the preachers, the parents, and the teachers. So the rapper still has the power. There can be a million Calvin Buttses. Calvin Butts’ son will sneak and buy my records.

Q: Was your recent talk at Locke High School, which was a reward for students who improved their grades, and experience for you as well?

A: Well, it’s some things I can’t say on my records, because, it’s like the kids. We’re addicted to sex and violence, okay? All of us. Everybody in here. We want to see what’s goin’ on. You know, ‘What happened to who?’ The scandal. We want to know all that type of stuff. So, in a world like that, how can you teach something positive without looking like a square? Just like a baby who doesn’t like the medicine, you have to put a little juice in the medicine, so he doesn’t detect that he’s getting well. You might hear, ‘Motherfucker, bitch, boom, boom, boom.’ – all that stuff that our ears crave for, just like a heroin addict craves heroin. But inside of that is the medicine. I always talk about what is really goin’ on, the issues, but it’s kinda unexpected if you’re not lookin’ for that. Hopefully pretty soon you won’t have to use these words. There will be an evolutionary process where you won’t have to use those words to get that message across.

Q: At Locke High School you discussed rappers being blamed for violence in our society. In an interview with the Orange County Register, you said, ‘I learned to throw my first punch from Bugs Bunny. I picked up my first weapon at Toys ‘R Us. You are what you’ve been taught. America is very violent, so what do you expect? If the parents are going to be violent, the kids are going to be violent.’

A: That’s right! Bombs, shots in cartoons. Children’s programs. I saw my first guns on cartoons. I saw my first guns being used on TV cartoons. Not just guns, but being used to kill. I’ve seen Popeye…a fly is in Popeye’s house and flyin’ and fuckin’ with Popeye…I’ve seen him take a shotgun and destroy the house! Tryin’ to kill this fly. And once the house falls, the fly is still in there. Kids watch this constantly. 

Q: I would imagine the double standard of Death Wish movies and blow ‘em up films must blow your mind…

A: Yes. Definitely. For some reason, America is threatened by me with a gun. And I didn’t invent the gun. I didn’t make the gun. So they have bigger and better guns. So to see me on the screen with the weapon is threatening to America, because America is so guilty that she feels that I want to harm them with a gun. 

Q: Is it too late to save this country, this city?

A: It’s never too late.

Q: What can be done, besides continued education?

A: What we do is that we don’t make out education. I had a record that didn’t make it on to this new album, but will probably be on my next album, called, “Message To The White Man.” We’ve been through hell and the government keeps their foot on our necks but what the white people don’t realize is that (the government) does the same thing to them. We’re all just pawns in the game, and it’s ten percent of the population runnin’ the world. And they have us and they play us like chess. We’re like sheep. Wherever they want to hear us, that’s the way we go. White and black. So, once we realize that, and we figure out that this government doesn’t love anything but the dollar, we can start to take the country back.
White supremacy only works in an all-white society; in a mixed society like we have now, white supremacy will only hurt the society. What’s happening is that you have too many people who are goin’ against the grain. Where can you go if you are pushing two different ways? We have to teach white kids about all different cultures. We need to teach black kids about all different cultures. So everybody will respect everybody. What we have is a lack of respect. 

Q: Can the record business and music media help?

A: They are too busy getting new acts for their magazines or new acts for their radio stations. They’d rather sweep all this under the rug. But, you keep sweeping that shit under the rug and pretty soon your house is fucked up until you are ready to clean up. So the rappers have to take the initiative. 
Look at rap in 1983 or 1984, when it was all black and Puerto Rican. Now, the emergence of Chuck D and his new message…if you go to a rap concert, you are liable to see every race and nationality at the show. The rapper is up there. He might be pro-black, but he’s not lying, and he’s tellin’ the truth. And that’s all we hunger for. That’s the only thing that makes us live. And once we hear lies, it destroys our brain and our body. I can’t give you a lie to play the fool. ‘Eat that plate of food.’ How are you going to grow with that? It’s nothin’ there to grow on. But, when I give you truth, you can grow and you can live.

Q: Do you deliberately not put lyric sheets and printed words on the recordings? Is this a conscious effort?

A: Yes, it’s a conscious effort. I don’t want to give people who don’t like Ice Cube an edge to use my words. You have to be a hip-hop fan, a fan of the music, to have the patience to hear everything that Ice Cube says. I don’t want anybody who is not a fan of my music to try and make my words, because all they gonna do is take my words and use them against me.

Q: Does the love experience fuel you or expand the body of work you’ve created? People sing things you’ve written.

A: I know. In my show, I leave the heavy shit out, the political stuff on my records. When you come to a show, it’s basically party. I don’t really want to be up there and try and talk about social issues. You know what I mean? Come together and we jam. After my music career, maybe I could do a lecture type thing and define my records more. When you come to see me in a show, man, it’s time to party. I think the kids have a lot of shit on their minds, and when they come to see me perform, they don’t want to get bombarded.

Q: What do you dislike most about being a recording artist?

A: No privacy. That’s the one thing I don’t like about it. Sometimes I don’t want to be Ice Cube, I want to be O’Shea. I want to be able to go to Magic Mountain and stand in line and get on a ride. I don’t want to cause commotion. I want to get through here and do what I want to do.

Q: You know, one of the things I’ve always felt about your recording personality, and in our talk today, is that you don’t hate everybody. In fact, you must really love everybody to do what you do. I mean, in the work I produce on tape, or write about, I do it to reveal and heal people. Do you feel the same way?

A: Definitely.

Q: Is it gratifying to know that your recordings and your comments are registering?

A: Yes. It’s really just one man’s comment. It’s just an opinion. I’m just one idea, and for the people to acknowledge that is cool. People come to me to get some of their questions answered. 

Q: Can you describe what it’s like when something you birthed, like a term, a word,. or a phrase, is incorporated into everyday speech and conversation.

A: I feel good. That’s how we get slang in the neighborhood. Somebody is trying to invent a new dialect and see how far we go. I invented something people are using now, ‘ Break ‘em off some.’ That was something that I invented and I just wanted to see how far it would go. I start hearing it more and more on records, and it gets bigger and bigger. And you say, ‘I thought of that phrase.’ It becomes a world phrase. That’s when you get down into the neighborhood, because it’s a new language comin’ out of the neighborhood.

Q: It seems nobody talks to you about the influence of comedy albums, Richard Pryor, and your love of the oral tradition. Well, you know where I’m at as a pioneer producing spoken word albums. 

A: I’ve always loved it. What it is, is people saying things I wish I would have said. So, instead of rippin’ in off, I put it in a strategic place. Some people can define my records, even if they might have spoke twenty years ago and I never heard what they said. And I do a record, and I end up comin’ across it, and I say, ‘That defines exactly what I’m tryin’ to say.’ There is an advantage about hearing somebody talk than reading them on a printed page. Reading someone on a printed page is flat. It doesn’t give anything to me. 

Q: “It Was a Good Day” got you over to some markets and ears that never heard or would want to investigate your music.  

A: All these black kids what to have something to eat, want to have someplace to take their woman. They just want to have everything everyone else has. That video…to me, the day I can drive out of here and nobody is tryin’ to get in my space, is a good day. I think if I’m gonna be a real person, I have to talk about the bad as well as the good. So, when they heard “Good Day” from Ice Cube, it was so different from the norm. It was still good hip-hop that they latched on. I got more publicity and more air time on that record. ‘If we can pump him this way, maybe he’ll keep goin’ that way and we never have to look back to what he did before.’ But “Check Yo Self” followed. After Boys ‘N The Hood they thought AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted shit was gone.

Harvey Kubernik is the author of 19 books, including Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972 and a study on Neil Young, Heart of Gold.
Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and brother Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz.  For October 2021 they are writing and assembling a multi-narrative book on Jimi Hendrix for the same publisher.
Otherworld Cottage Industries had just published Harvey Kubernik’s 500-page book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters, featuring his  interviews with D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, Murray Lerner, Morgan Neville, Henry Diltz, Graham Nash, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, Mary Wilson, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Andrew Loog Oldham, John Ridley, Curtis Hanson, Dick Clark, Travis Pike, Allan Arkush, and David Leaf, among others.   
  This century Harvey wrote the liner note booklets to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special and The Ramones’ End of the Century. Kubernik and Andrew Loog Oldham wrote the liner essays to The Essential Carole King.  
In 2020 Harvey served as Consultant on Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time documentary directed by Alison Ellwood which debuted in May 2020 on the EPIX/MGM television channel and subsequently seen worldwide.  
Kubernik was interviewed last decade by director/producer Neil Norman for his GNP Crescendo documentary, The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard. Jan Savage and Daryl Hooper original members of the Seeds participated along with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, Iggy Pop, Kim Fowley, Jim Salzer, the Bangles,  photographer Ed Caraeff,  Mark Weitz of the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Johnny Echols of Love. Miss Pamela Des Barres served as movie narrator. 
This decade Harvey was filmed for the currently in-production documentary about former Hollywood landmark Gold Star Recording Studio and co-owner/engineer Stan Ross produced and directed by Brad Ross and Jonathan Rosenberg. Brian Wilson, Herb Alpert, Buffalo Springfield’s Richie Furay, Darlene Love, Mike Curb, Chris Montez, Bill Medley, Don Randi, Hal Blaine, Who record producer Shel Talmy, songwriter Richard Sherman, Don Peake, Love’s Johnny Echols, Gloria Jones, Slim Jim Phantom, Paul Body, Bill Inglot, Carol Kaye, Melanie Vannem, Marky Ramone, David Kessel and Steven Van Zandt have been lensed).