It’s been 25 years since Ice Cube graced society with his album Death Certificate, an album that was noted for its anti-Semitic and racist overtones. However, the rapper has decided that now is the time to have a celebratory re-release in honor of the achievement, with three new songs on the album.
The former member of N.W.A. interviewed with Rolling Stone’s Kory Grow last week, explaining his reasons for the release. The original album was meant to speak “loudly about mistreatment of African-Americans.” Most of the songs involved a gritty outlook on what it meant to be African-American in that era. Shortly after Death Certificate was released in 1991, the L.A. riots began.
Two and half decades later, apparently the rapper still finds “plenty to keep him angry.” According to Rolling Stone, Ice Cube has the same feeling now that Trump is president that he had when George H.W. Bush was president at the time of the album’s debut. As he explained to Grow, “How could a guy that selfish care about you? You got a president that don’t care.”
Of course, the three new songs target the police. Ice Cube made it seem like his song, “Good Cop Bad Cop,” is a message for good members of the police force to watch out for their allegedly corrupt colleagues. However, a look at the lyrics reveals a slightly different message:
“Lazy Cop f**kin wit that crazy Cop
Always bragging - bout the new case he got”
And then the rapper accuses police of being a Trojan horse, “full of excessive force.”
In another song, “Dominate the Weak,” he says again, “Ima f**k the police,” and said “they tryin to re-enslave us.” Ice Cube explained to Grow in Rolling Stone that this song was “about what I see happening everywhere I look, the makings of a police state right before my eyes.”
It's hard to believe that Ice Cube can see a police state emerging from it. In the midst of the protests, the freedom that the American people still possess to make political statements, any evidence of a police state pales in the face of a very loud democracy. The fact that he could release and then re-release this album give the lie to that statement.
