CULT RECORD: ICE CUBE: "AMERIKKKA'S MOST WANTED" (1990)

Ice Cube's obsession lies in lyrically unearthing the horrors and subversive pleasures of the South Central ghettoes he helped cloak in rap mythology. Even when he misses the mark, the furious intelligence and rhetorical skill of his gangstAfronationalist aesthetic manages to provoke and inspire. Breaking with N.W.A at an extraordinarily young age for one who'd already given gangsta its most believable character, Cube went gone on to imprint his blunt anger over several crucial solo albums, flourishing the self-contained doomy presence that also gained him critical acclaim apart from music in the film Boyz N the Hood.
On AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, Ice Cube seizes the spotlight. On "The Nigga Ya Love to Hate," he is "kickin' shit called street knowledge," demanding to know " Why more niggas in the pen than in college?" The track is bolstered by a swaggering bass line, the key to an aural assault that, throughout the album. is presided over by Public Enemy's Bomb Squad. Cube relentlessly exposes the terror of police brutality ("AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted"), yet mirrors such treatment in his own attacks on the fairer sex ("Once Upon a Time in the Projects" and "I'm Only Out for One Thing"). Cube also gets delirious joy in rattling the pieties of the black bourgeoisie; "Turn Off the Radio," a  propulsive synthesis of horns and psychedelic guitars, acerbically blasts the R&B lovers who in the late '80s crowded rap off the black airwaves.

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