I'll Never Have Dinner with the President
October 6, 2021 3:57 PM Subscribe
This month marks the 29th anniversary of Ice Cube's second solo album, Death Certificate.
While his first solo album, Amerikkka's Most Wanted, was produced by Public Enemy's The Bomb Squad, this one featured a more West-Coast-style production by longtime collaborators Sir Jinx and Boogiemen. Guest appearances include WC and the MAAD Circle, Kam, and the late Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad.
Unusual for a rap album at the time, it's a concept album, with, in Ice Cube's words, "The Death Side: a mirror image of where we are today; The Life Side: a vision of where we need to go." The singles were 'Steady Mobbin' and 'True to the Game.' Notable non-single tracks include 'Black Korea,' of which the Korean American Grocers Association (and longtime Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko) was not a fan, the self-critical 'Us,' and the scathing NWA dis song 'No Vaseline,' of which the Simon Wiesenthal Center was not a fan.
Death Certificate earned its Parental Advisory sticker--Ice Cube set out to offend absolutely everyone. Even the cover was controversial. The Chicago Tribune asked whether he'd gone too far. A too-clever New York Times headline writer asked if he should be chilled (Betteridge's Law applies). Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-.
It was recorded and released in between the Rodney King beating and the LAPD acquittal. Years later, Rolling Stone would give Death Certificate two entries on their '15 Songs that Predicted the 1992 LA Riots' list. Reconsidered in 2011, and rereleased in 2017, it is Ice Cube's extremely problematic masterpiece.
While his first solo album, Amerikkka's Most Wanted, was produced by Public Enemy's The Bomb Squad, this one featured a more West-Coast-style production by longtime collaborators Sir Jinx and Boogiemen. Guest appearances include WC and the MAAD Circle, Kam, and the late Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad.
Unusual for a rap album at the time, it's a concept album, with, in Ice Cube's words, "The Death Side: a mirror image of where we are today; The Life Side: a vision of where we need to go." The singles were 'Steady Mobbin' and 'True to the Game.' Notable non-single tracks include 'Black Korea,' of which the Korean American Grocers Association (and longtime Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko) was not a fan, the self-critical 'Us,' and the scathing NWA dis song 'No Vaseline,' of which the Simon Wiesenthal Center was not a fan.
Death Certificate earned its Parental Advisory sticker--Ice Cube set out to offend absolutely everyone. Even the cover was controversial. The Chicago Tribune asked whether he'd gone too far. A too-clever New York Times headline writer asked if he should be chilled (Betteridge's Law applies). Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-.
It was recorded and released in between the Rodney King beating and the LAPD acquittal. Years later, Rolling Stone would give Death Certificate two entries on their '15 Songs that Predicted the 1992 LA Riots' list. Reconsidered in 2011, and rereleased in 2017, it is Ice Cube's extremely problematic masterpiece.
And then I came back alive with "The Birth". When it got to "I wanna Kill Sam", that legitimately might have been the start of me understanding something was wrong with this place. When Cube says "And I'm lookin...Is he in Watts, Oakland, Philly or Brooklyn? It seems like he got the whole country behind him..." and then almost parenthetically pulls you aside and says ("So it's hard to find him"), that's when it started clicking.
This whole country is guilty. This whole country has been doing this. "Uncle Sam" is the figurehead for this place that treats me like dirt and wants me to fail. It would take years more listening to rap, learning much more from text books and the media and personal experience to really believe it, but something about how Cube came at it sideways like that - "so it's hard to find him", made me realize there was something wrong. That there was somebody behind the curtain, and maybe it was everybody. It was akin to Neo's experience, just having someone say "you know something's wrong, don't you?"
The rest of the Life Side all melds into one kind of Cali-esque soundtrack for me, until you get to "Us" & "No Vaseline". I felt the former, though it was a situations where I hadn't yet learned the "this conversation is for us, not them" thing quite yet. And for the latter, I never liked NWA so I was just on Cube's side and the song brought me back to that first Kill at Will experience. The song is just raw, and yes, problematic. But this album definitely is one of the top albums in hip hop history, for so many reasons. Thanks again for the post.
posted by cashman at 7:07 PM on October 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
This whole country is guilty. This whole country has been doing this. "Uncle Sam" is the figurehead for this place that treats me like dirt and wants me to fail. It would take years more listening to rap, learning much more from text books and the media and personal experience to really believe it, but something about how Cube came at it sideways like that - "so it's hard to find him", made me realize there was something wrong. That there was somebody behind the curtain, and maybe it was everybody. It was akin to Neo's experience, just having someone say "you know something's wrong, don't you?"
The rest of the Life Side all melds into one kind of Cali-esque soundtrack for me, until you get to "Us" & "No Vaseline". I felt the former, though it was a situations where I hadn't yet learned the "this conversation is for us, not them" thing quite yet. And for the latter, I never liked NWA so I was just on Cube's side and the song brought me back to that first Kill at Will experience. The song is just raw, and yes, problematic. But this album definitely is one of the top albums in hip hop history, for so many reasons. Thanks again for the post.
posted by cashman at 7:07 PM on October 6, 2021 [7 favorites]
I ain't lettin' my daughter go out wit' no damn Ice Cubes...lol
posted by Chuffy at 9:32 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Chuffy at 9:32 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Two things I learned about Death Certificate from some guy's Twitter feed and don't really care to fact-check: the promotion budget was $18,000, compared to an estimated $1 million to promote MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. Despite this difference, Death Certificate debuted at #2 on the charts and Hammer debuted at #3. (The $18k piece appears in other sources, the Hammer piece does not.)
Unusual for rap albums at the time: while there are clean versions of the singles, there has never been a clean/edited version of the album.
posted by box at 10:07 AM on October 7, 2021
Unusual for rap albums at the time: while there are clean versions of the singles, there has never been a clean/edited version of the album.
posted by box at 10:07 AM on October 7, 2021
Great post! Can’t say why, but I had a blind spot for this album for SO long. AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Predator were on heavy rotation for me, so I don’t know why I neglected Death Certificate.
Extremely problematic, indeed. But when Cube’s right, he’s so right that it feels like he’s rapping today.
I want to write a bunch of stuff about Cube, his businesses, his influence, his being continuously on game in all types of artistic arenas for over 30 years, but I’ll just link to MeFi user lkc’s fabulous comment from nearly a decade ago.
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:21 PM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Extremely problematic, indeed. But when Cube’s right, he’s so right that it feels like he’s rapping today.
I want to write a bunch of stuff about Cube, his businesses, his influence, his being continuously on game in all types of artistic arenas for over 30 years, but I’ll just link to MeFi user lkc’s fabulous comment from nearly a decade ago.
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:21 PM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
About what cashman was saying about people not being able to look past the content to the message, a great example of that is ‘Doing Dumb Shit.’ Cube spends almost the whole song talking about how he was the baddest-ass pre-teen that ever existed, and then he ends it with:
Now I look at all the kids in the neighborhood
Trying to be baby macks
Doin’ shit that I did seven years back
Goin’ through a stage
But before they could grow up they on the front page
And they moms is havin’ a fit
Cause they died young, doing dumb shit
Things done changed.
posted by box at 4:49 PM on October 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Now I look at all the kids in the neighborhood
Trying to be baby macks
Doin’ shit that I did seven years back
Goin’ through a stage
But before they could grow up they on the front page
And they moms is havin’ a fit
Cause they died young, doing dumb shit
Things done changed.
posted by box at 4:49 PM on October 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
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Around the time I wasn't big into Cube and definitely not NWA, but Kill at Will changed all that. The production and how clean and dangerous it sounded just hooked me. And when I picked up the pastic-wrapped tape in the record store and looked at the cover, I was staring at this dude handing me a weapon. I left the store, put the tape in the deck and listened to it on the drive home, but I never made it past Jackin For Beats cause it was just that sick.
When Death Certificate came out, once again the cover drew me in. And that lineup of tracks to start the album is still one of the most fiery there is in hip hop history. If you're black you've been to churches and heard the sermons and the proselytizing and you're familiar with the cadence and the sound of the 'preacher voice', so when it gets to the end of "The Funeral" and the preacher says "he was the wronnnnng....", that hits you like WHOA. It's more than just provocative, it's basically a message akin to "souls to the polls" that speaks to the feeling of us weaponizing our institutions to the point where even the church is ready to break convention and acknowledge a desire for amerikkkan style problem fixing.
After that, "My Summer Vacation" still hits so hard that it stayed atop my workout song list for like 2 & 1/2 years between 2017 & 2020. But the song itself is emblematic of a lot of rap at the time, with nuances that seemingly go unnoticed by so many - that a life of crime and drug dealing and thinking you're invincible like so many of us black men do, will wind you up dead or in jail. Like Cube, Ice-T and others would tell all these crazy stories and so many times at the end of the song, the guy dies, and the song is a clear lesson, but a lot of our parents, friends, fellow churchgoers and family members couldn't get past the violent content to hear the message.
Every song, save one, on side 1 is a banger. And when you got to "Alive on Arrival" and once again listened to what essentially would become a scene in "hood movies" later in life, it really got scary. That was one of the first times I remember contemplating that you could get to the hospital, be talking and even lucid, yet still die. Back at that time it felt like anybody who got to the hospital talking and responding, lived. But nope. And that was the end of that side of the tape, so when it ended, it ended. And when I first got that tape, I didn't have auto-reverse, so the flatline sound happened, it went into "Death" and that was it - no sound until you took out the tape and basically resurrected yourself. You had time to think, contemplate, wonder about all that. Like you were still dead for a while and the journey had ended abruptly like so many of the 70s science fiction films I was watching reruns of at the time.
posted by cashman at 6:58 PM on October 6, 2021 [16 favorites]