Happy Birthday to the icon rapper, actor and producer O’Shea Jackson Sr, better known as Ice Cube. Today on June 15th, 2021 Ice Cube celebrates his 52nd birthday.
He is considered to be one of the founders of the gangsta rap generation, Cube gained national recognition by being the primary songwriter and a performing member of the hip-hop groups C.I.A. and N.W.A.
Five Facts You May Not Know About Ice Cube
1. Ice Cube attended the same high school as some other famous rappers.
As a teen, Cube's parents pull him out of school in his high-crime neighbourhood and bus him to suburban Taft high school in the San Fernando Valley.
He begins penning his nascent rhymes during keyboard class at the same alma mater as Eazy-E and House of Pain's Everlast, and begins to question why the drugs and violence destroying so many of his friends and neighbours aren't being eradicated.
2. If rap hadn't worked out, he could have had a career in architectural drafting.
Determined to carve a better life for himself, Jackson enrolls in the Phoenix Institute of Technology and earns a two-year diploma in architectural drafting.
3. Eazy-E nearly rejected the classic song "Boyz-n-the-Hood."
Cube raps the lyrics to "Boyz-n-the-Hood" for Eazy-E, who initially rejects the song before changing his mind, with Dre's encouragement, and deciding to put it on wax, the first of dozens of verses Cube would scribe for Eazy.
4. Ice Cube helped to make Chris Tucker's career.
"If you can write a record, you can write a movie," [filmmaker John] Singleton tells Cube.
Inspired, Cube writes and stars in the cult classic Friday, which grosses $28 million on a $3.5 million budget and makes co-star Chris Tucker a hot commodity in Hollywood.
5. Ice Cube reconciled with Eazy-E shortly before the rapper's death, and the two discussed reuniting N.W.A.
Eazy-E dies in March, 1995, but not before running into Cube at the tunnel in New York City. "We ended up talking for two hours," Cube will tell Hot 97.
"He was talking about, 'Let's get the group back together.' Two months later he got sick."
How well do you know Cube? Check out our quiz down below!