Album: Ice Cube - Raw Footage

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Veterans – it seems like most get better with time, especially those who’ve consistently upheld their credibility as a major name without having to sell out. There have been a few which shall remain nameless; however, Ice Cube is not one of them. Okay, so he’s been doing family movies recently…for some it was him getting soft – but in reality, the break he took only made him harder, and Raw Footage is straight-up evidence of this.

There were mixed opinions regarding Cube’s previous album, Laugh Now Cry Later. Many fans were left disappointed with the trade-off of Gangsta Cube for Club-banger Cube. Maybe he did need a break from making real raw hits and make tracks for people to just party to. Who knows? It doesn’t matter because Raw Footage is a shift in the completely opposite direction from his last album; exit club hits, enter realness.

The album is absolutely jam-packed with deep, political cuts, such as Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It. Featuring a heavy bass driven beat partnered with Dr. Dre-reminiscent piano loops laid down by Maestro, Cube targets all the figures who decide to make gangsta rap the scapegoat for the problems of the world - “If I sell a little crack…If I die in Iraq…If I take you for granted…If I fuck up the planet, ain't nothin’ to it – Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It.”

His content remains intelligent throughout, yet one very notable cut is Stand Tall. This is evidence that a “feel-good” track does not need to make you get up and dance, but rather allow you to chill over a smooth beat laid down by DJ Crazy Toones, sampling William DeVaughn’s soul classic Be Thankful. Cube simply tells it like it is on this joint; “I make shit raw that piss off the law/If you want some fake shit, turn this off/If you want some realness, I know you can feel this…”, touching on everything from the crack epidemic to Santa Claus.

Though the majority of Raw Footage is simply hot, a couple of tracks are not. Coincidentally, these are both collaborative tracks – Here He Come (featuring Doughboy – no, not Ice Cube’s character from Boyz N The Hood), and Get Used To It (featuring WC and The Game – strange that this track isn’t as good as expected given three hot MCs are on it). What drags both these tracks down is not only the beats which tend to go back to club beats, but also the content does not fit with the rest of the album. He would have been better off recording two more solo political songs to stay on point.

Despite those two undesirable tracks, Raw Footage is quite simply one of the best albums of 2008. It’s raw, it’s political, it’s intelligent, and when Ice Cube tones that down there’s some fine West Coast beats to back up those tracks. Some said Laugh Now Cry Later was Ice Cube’s comeback album – hell no! THIS is his comeback album, THIS is something refreshed, THIS is Raw Footage of gangsta rap at its finest!

Available through Lench Mob Records