There’s a scene in Ice Cube’s cult basic movie Friday (1995) when Smokey—performed by Chris Tucker—says to Dice, “I’m gonna get you excessive as we speak as a result of it’s Friday. You ain’t obtained no job, and also you ain’t obtained shit to do,” a line eternally burned into popular culture’s ’90s lexicon. Though Dice had beforehand appeared in motion pictures like Boyz N The Hood and CB4, the stoner flick launched Dice into one other orbit and spawned two common sequels, Subsequent Friday and Friday After Subsequent, and an animated collection. It was the sensible begin to one other colourful chapter. By the point he shot the movie’s first installment, Dice was already a bona fide rap star, however after Friday, he was additionally a film star.
Starting with N.W.A’s seminal album, 1988’s Straight Outta Compton, Dice asserted himself as a tour de pressure early on. Along with his signature snarl and brutally trustworthy lyrical intestine punches, he helped put gangsta rap firmly on the map. After departing the group beneath considerably contentious circumstances, he launched into a fruitful solo profession, releasing AmeriKKKa’s Most Needed in 1990, Loss of life Certificates in 1991, The Predator in 1992, and Deadly Injection in 1993.
During the last 30 years, Dice has advanced right into a one-man military. He established his personal three-on-three basketball league, Big3, starred in a number of extra blockbuster movies, launched a number of albums, and shaped a supergroup with Too $hort, Snoop Dogg, and E-40 referred to as Mount Westmore. To say he’s stored himself busy could be a gross understatement. At this level in his profession, he’s completed a lot (together with being inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame), that it’s troublesome to fathom what he might probably do subsequent. However as Dice would put it, there “ain’t no stoppin’ a G.”
“It’s actually nearly getting higher on the issues that I’m doing,” he stated. “I don’t have a look at it as conquering new floor. I have a look at it extra like filling a void. I like doing shit that I believe is cool and with the ability to current it to the world however not being scared to current it to the world. As a result of generally folks maintain they self again as a result of they don’t have belief in means to ship. It’s nearly getting higher.
“I can all the time do higher data. I can do higher motion pictures. I can promote my league higher, so it’s simply actually not on the lookout for extra floor to beat until it make sense. However doing what you could possibly creatively ship at a excessive degree is actually the purpose.”
Dice is well-versed in breaking down obstacles. Other than his historical past with N.W.A, the proud Los Angeles native took a bet when he recruited The Bomb Squad of Public Enemy fame for co-production on AmeriKKKa’s Most Needed. West Coast artists usually didn’t mesh with East Coast artists again then, so it was virtually taboo to take the danger. In Dice’s case, the gamble paid off, and the album was licensed platinum inside 4 months of its arrival and impressed others to comply with swimsuit. It’s all a part of Dice’s ethos, which includes copious quantities of anti-establishment pondering.
“All people’s a revolutionary in the event you simply don’t settle for what got here earlier than you simply because,” he stated. “If it don’t give you the results you want, don’t settle for it and do one thing totally different. Simply because they’ve been doing this the identical method for 1,000 years, who offers a fuck? Yeah, I haven’t been right here 1,000 years, and I’m not gonna be right here for a 1,000, so I’m right here to alter the sport and do it my method that works for me so long as I’m right here. After which, if folks don’t prefer it, they might change it again once I’m gone.”
It’s an admirable solution to reside. Too usually, folks’s self-worth is predicated on what others consider them, however Dice has all the time bucked the system.
“Folks that don’t love you ain’t no use to hearken to them, actually,” he stated. “They don’t have your greatest curiosity at coronary heart. They’ve their very own greatest curiosity at coronary heart.”
He realized it from his father, Hosea Jackson, who was once a groundskeeper for the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He additionally credit his older brother, Clyde Jackson, for giving him the arrogance to be his personal man.
“It come from my pops, my brother—simply my family,” he defined. “My pops just isn’t a part of any group, gang, or societal membership. No man exterior of his job might ever inform him what to do, so he was all the time his personal man. He didn’t stand behind no person however his brothers. That’s it. No different state of affairs was gonna make him do one thing that he didn’t need to do. And I’m not a part of nothing the place any person can inform me what to do. Something that was like that aside from perhaps soccer or basketball—coaches inform you what to do on a regular basis—however exterior of that, I don’t need to be part of nothing like that. I need to be my very own man and stand alone two toes and take care of my very own conditions and never have to stick to anyone.”
Ice Dice has smashed that purpose and is in a spot the place he can navigate his profession just like the captain of his personal ship. He’ll carry out on the Cali Vibes Competition in mid-February earlier than heading to Canada for a fast, eight-stop tour with Xzibit later that month. His Big3 league returns to CBS in 2024, and his partnership with Weedmaps is prospering (he has his personal pressure, Good Day Kush, named after his 1992 single “It Was a Good Day”). Like Frank Sinatra, he did it his method.
“It’s a blessing, actually,” he stated of his profession. “For one, I made a promise to myself once I obtained on this enterprise that I wouldn’t let it change who I’m as an individual, so I used to be all the time keen to let the chips fall the place they might and never fear about ‘I can’t do that.’ You understand like, ‘Will my profession be over if I do that or that?’ While you broke while you began off, going again to being broke just isn’t a difficulty. That’s not motivation, like, ‘I’m going to be broke once more, let me bow right down to this bullshit.’”
Ice Dice is presently wrapping up his eleventh studio album, Man Down, a testomony to his unwavering dedication to the craft. In spite of everything, he might have hung up the mic years in the past and rested on his laurels, however he credit all the pieces to hip-hop. When requested what he needed to say to a tradition that’s given him a lot, he replied, “Thanks for being uncooked and actual. And thanks for serving to us create industries the place we are able to feed our households.”
This text was initially Up to date within the February 2024 problem of Excessive Occasions Journal.