Promotion of Ice Cube by Hollywood


      Ice Cube, writer and performer of rap songs that glorify drug dealing, murder, misogyny, and violent racism, has achieved musical fame and has gone on to carve out a niche for himself as one of filmdom's angry young black men, and in more recent years to become one of its heroes. Last year he appeared in Anaconda, a big budget and highly successful movie put out by Sony Corporation of Japan. In his movie role he helped kill the beast, and the role is similar to the fantasy he has acted out musically in rap for the last several years, except that in his music the beast is not a giant snake, rather it is whites. The average viewer without knowing it puts money into the bank account of a violent racist. Time Warner's New Line Cinema boosted Ice Cube from actor to director by investing $5 million into The Player's Club, a film that opened April 8 and plays nationwide.

      Ice Cube often calls for a race war, and an example comes from Da Lench Mob's 1994 rap "Goin' Bananas": "We're having thoughts of overthrowing the government. . . . It's open season on crackers, you know. The morgue will be full of Caucasian John Doe's.*" The rappers put their own names into the rap personalizing their commitment to the cause. Besides glorifying the murder of whites, they brag about being gangbangers and outrunning the police. While one of the rappers raps about drinking beer, another one says that he does not drink beer because he has joined Nation of Islam. The rap finishes with Nation of Islam doctrine: "Oh my God, Allah, have mercy. I'm killing them devils because they're not worthy to walk the earth with the original black man.* They must be forgetting. It's time for Armageddon, and I won't rest until they're all dead."

      Two years after meeting John Singleton at a rally for Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan, Ice Cube took a role in director Singleton's first movie, Boyz N the Hood, in which the rapper plays a former inmate who kills to avenge the murder of his brother. In 1995 and since then, Hollywood distributors and theaters nationwide featured Ice Cube as the good guy: the neighborhood protector (Friday 1995), the victim of a sheriff's department full of racist, misogynist, anti-Jewish white male officers (The Glass Shield 1995), the victim of apartheid-era South African police and the victor over post-apartheid white skinheads (Dangerous Ground 1997), and the snake-killing hero (Anaconda 1997).

      After acting as a murderous drug dealer in 1992 (Trespass), Ice Cube in his second role with Mr. Singleton in Higher Learning (1994) is the defender of black grievances. Ice Cube's character starts fistfights with whites who had instigated earlier racist acts. Higher Learning is a film in which white characters spew out Nazi doctrines of racial hatred and white supremacy, and all the while, Ice Cube acts in camouflage--there is no mention of his recruitment for Nation of Islam or of his promotion of its racial hatred. Director Singleton displays swastikas on arm, neck, uniforms, flags, and apartment floor of white characters, yet he does not show a single "X" on Nation of Islam's avid recruiter or in his character's apartment. The one-sided treatment of racial extremism by Mr. Singleton leaves room for us to have suspicions about his intentions.

      Away from the movie set during the same year, in his musical work "My Skin Is My Sin," Ice Cube spouts the belief in black supremacy held in common by Nation of Islam followers: "not only mentally but physically the black man rules." On the 1994 track, he advocates violence in the following ways: a vow to kill whites and a foreboding that black gangbangers will join in, a call for the hanging of Los Angeles' then police chief Willy Williams who is black, and a warning to J. B. Stoner, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, not to get caught on a street corner by Ice Cube. From his point of view he gives, in the song, the following justifications for the violence: whites kill blacks in churches; whites took advantage of his forefather and of Native Americans; whites took away the religion that blacks had and gave them Bibles; blacks are brainwashed by American education; and the white "devils" are all the same.

      Ice Cube put kill-the-whites messages into a track that became part of a movie soundtrack. Not included in the movie Menace II Society, but put on the album version of the soundtrack for the movie, was a Da Lench Mob song called "Guerillas Ain't Gangstas." Ice Cube provided back-up vocals, and the rappers make the following threats at whites: "Bust a cracker into two. I shake you to the sewer. I gaffle [handcuff] your ass up and make it stink like manure. . . . I'm still much black, hitting devils with the bat." The rappers used titles of songs from their 1992 album to pass along threats directed at whites. In particular, the rappers holler out the following: "'Buck tha Devil' [and] boom with the black fist"; and "'Guerillas in tha Mist' with the silent kill-skills." The rappers continue with the following hatred: "I'm gotta buck you; plus I never trust you, a devil in drag. So fuck it. I'll just cut you. . . . I got to cut his fucking throat."

      On the title track of The Predator album, Ice Cube raps the slogan "no justice--no peace" along with his calls for racial violence. Director Singleton promotes the "no peace" part of the chant not only as a warning of civil disobedience but also as a threat of racial riots.


Lyrical References

*devils: whites.
*John Doe: male cadaver without identity.
*original black man: Nation of Islam professes that blacks were the first race of peoples on the earth.


Textual References

Anaconda, 1997, Sony Pictures, Sony Corporation; domestic box office receipts were over $65 million.

The Player's Club, New Line Cinema, Time Warner.

"Goin' Bananas" is from Planet of da Apes, 1994, Priority Records, EMI Group.

Connection between Ice Cube, John Singleton, and Louis Farrakhan: two years before July, 1991, Ice Cube and Mr. Singleton meet at a rally for "the Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan"; (New York Times, 7-14-91; 1995 Current Biography Yearbook, page 271.)

Friday, 1995, New Line Cinema, Time Warner; box office receipts were over $27 million.

The Glass Shield, 1995, Mirimax, now owned by Walt Disney; box office receipts were over $4 million.

Dangerous Ground, 1997, New Line Cinema, Time Warner; box office receipts were over $5 million.

Trespass, 1992, Universal City Studios, The Seagram Company.

More information about John Singleton's one-sided treatment of racial extremism in Higher Learning can be found at Reference Week1B 1.

Higher Learning, 1994, Columbia Pictures (now Sony Pictures), Sony Corporation; box office receipts were over $38 million.

Quote of black supremacy is from "My Skin Is My Sin" of the album Bootlegs & B-Sides; 1994, Priority Records, EMI Group.

Menace II Society, 1993, New Line Cinema, Time Warner. Not only is Nation of Islam thanked in the movie credits, but some of the movie's characters promote conformity with the extremist group. Furthermore, one song included in the movie is by Brand Nubian, a black rap group which pushes Nation of Islam doctrines and which sends out kill-the-whites messages. Before 1993, Brand Nubian rappers became members of an offshoot of Nation of Islam called Five Percent Nation. The Brand Nubian track included in Menace II Society, called "Lick Dem Muthaphuckas," issues forth the following threats at whites: "it's the dread[locks] with the nine. Lead to the head of you devils. . . . Get hit by a dread who is fed up with the nonsense. Leave you red with my clip. Empty out his contents. Spill your guts." Why do the directors of Menace II Society, The Hughes Brothers, include a song about blacks killing whites when there is no scene in the movie that shows blacks killing whites or that shows blacks threatening to kill whites? The only black against non-black violence shown is of a young black brutally murdering two Korean husband-and-wife shop owners. After the young killer steals the store's security tape, he and his friends watch the video-taped killings over and over again at their apartment, shouting out victoriously as the young killer shoots the Korean husband in the head at point-blank range. The Hughes Brothers never indicate that black-on-Asian violence is wrong, except for a quickly flashed scene showing the killer being arrested; instead the directors have left it up to the audience to decide for themselves whether it is wrong or for them to assume it is wrong. What is telling about The Hughes Brothers' choice of scenes, however, is the fact that they do not leave up to assumption the well-known view that blacks are treated unfairly in America. An older black character, who is portrayed as wise, tells a young black that it is not easy being a "black man" in America, and that the "hunt" is on for young blacks who are treated as "prey" by the system.

"Guerillas Ain't Gangstas" is from Menace II Society Soundtrack, 1993, Jive Records, Zomba Recording Corporation. On the track, Da Lench Mob rapper Shorty, who is a member of Nation of Islam, lets everyone know that he is "a black man who was saved by a savior." One of the writers for the track was Quincy D. III, who was awarded in 1990 with a GRAMMY for a song he did with rapper Ice-T.

Ice Cube raps the slogan "no justice--no peace" in the title track of The Predator album, 1992, Priority Records, EMI Group.


Posted at http://home.att.net/~phosphor on May 6, 1998.
Last update was posted June 15, 1999. Added on was info about Menace II Society and Brand Nubian.
Last editing was posted June 28, 1999.

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