An Ice Cube concert is an all-out assault on political correctness. No one is spared, not even the mouth in charge.
“(Expletive) you, Ice Cube!” the crowd cries at the rapper’s behest.
“I kinda like that (expletive),” Cube beams. “And then I got somethin’ to tell you.”
And so it went in the first of two shows Wednesday at China Club, as Cube and sidekick W.C. (of W.C. and the Madd Circle) delivered one verbal shotgun blast after another at every authority figure imaginable. Barrel-chested and sprouting the early stages of an Afro, Cube was a riveting, high-energy presence who climbed within inches of the audience’s collective face.
For all the rage in his voice, there’s an inescapable musicality as well. Whether surfing over the groove in “Wicked” or shooting between bass lines that thudded like distant artillary explosions in “Now I Gotta Wet’cha,” Cube’s diction was razor-sharp, his wordplay fluid.
There was a thrilling immediacy to it all, as Cube introduced his savage Bush-era putdown, “A Bird in the Hand,” with a commentary on the Washington mayor’s recent plea for National Guard intervention.
“They ain’t gonna stop there,” he brayed. “It’s gonna be Chicago next, and New York, Miami, Oakland . . .”
Hip-hop’s ability to take the news on the street onto the stage in a few hours remains unsurpassed, and with his booming baritone Cube is to the inner city what CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was to the 1992 gulf war.
In performing his notorious “(Expletive) the Police,” initially recorded by N.W.A. in 1989, Cube reasserted his genius for the telling detail, as when he describes how ghetto youth especially fear encountering black police officers intent on impressing their white partners.
Not all of Cube’s rhymes have held up as well. Some verge on shtick and some simply stink. His gay bashing and woman baiting are no longer shocking. They’re cliches. And the Cube worldview still holds that suburbia is populated with devils and there’s no problem that an AK-47 assault rifle can’t solve.
Yet Cube didn’t linger over these holes in his soul, didn’t appear consumed by his hatred. Instead, his music of transgression seemed somehow inclusive and celebratory, especially when “It was a Good Day” turned into a daydream that didn’t discriminate.
If not entirely vindicating Cube’s more problematic views, it indicated that the rapper is at least wrestling with them. Like many of the youths in his audience, the 24-year-old native of South Central Los Angeles is still searching for his identity and sorting out his enemies, real and imagined.
Mad Flava opened the show with a boisterous, three-pronged vocal attack.
