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Ice Cube

Raw Footage

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BY Jordan Timm   August 20, 2008 21:08

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“Hell on earth is being stuck in the ’80s,” Ice Cube raps on his new album — but that’s the conundrum here. Raw Footage has a foot in each of two decades, and it’s a stretch. The throwback West Coast beats sound by turns timeless or dated, and lyrically, it’s a mixed bag. Cube’s best moments come when he’s hurling political invective, challenging the myopic ’hood mentality and declaring himself, as he does on “It Takes a Nation,” to be “the only rapper wanna fist-fight the president.” But while nobody can refute his O.G. status, there’s too much distance between the guy whose day job is starring in Hollywood family comedies and the guy he’s at pains to remind us he once was. Verse after verse is  spent defending gangsta rap — but when’s the last time we even heard that phrase? 

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