ICE CUBE
Ice Cube (born O’Shea Jackson Sr.; June 15, 1969) is an American rapper, writer and actor. One of the founding artists of gangsta rap, Ice Cube initially gained recognition as the primary songwriting and performing member of the seminal hip-hop groups C.I.A. and N.W.A, the latter of which gained extreme notoriety for pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music, as well as visual imagery in music videos. After leaving N.W.A in December 1989, Ice Cube embarked on a successful solo career, releasing the albums AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (1990) and Death Certificate (1991), both of which have attained platinum certification in the United States, while also being classed as defining albums of the 1990s. Following the release of Death Certificate, Ice Cube’s popularity was further enhanced by his role in the critically acclaimed film Boyz n the Hood (1991), while also writing and starring in the Friday film series, largely reinventing his public image as a movie star. (More from Wikipedia)
Will Smith parlayed their hit song into a stint on a sitcom called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and later became one of the biggest movie stars of our time following roles in summer blockbusters like Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997). He is not the only hip hop star to move to the small and/or big screen. Ice Cube, one of the founders of gangsta rap in his group N.W.A., has starred in numerous films in a variety of genres, such as All About the Benjamins, Barbershop, and XXX: State of the Union. Ice-T – whose debut album Rhyme Pays (1987) was “the first hip hop album to carry an explicit content sticker” (according to Wikipedia) – is well-known for his prominent role in the long-running television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
(September 2016)
