Ice Cube went on to a successful solo career in the 1990s, releasing a dozen albums including his back-to-back concept albums “Man Down” in 2024 and last year’s “Man Up.”
” ‘Man Down’ was a standalone record. And then as I’m working on the record, I’m thinking of concepts. It kind of don’t fit that record, but fit another record, you know,” he explained. “Ideas started to come. It’s just me in a good groove, and I just wanted to keep recording. So I started wrapping my head around the ‘Man Up’ concept.”
“Man Down” was Ice Cube’s first album since 2018’s “Everythings Corrupt.”
“I’m always recording, but I also have to be inspired,” he said. “And I’m not gonna just do it … like a job, right? You know, it’s all inspiration.”
Inspiration is one thing that is never lacking for Ice Cube, whose multi-hyphenate career includes filmmaking (the iconic “Friday” series whose fourth and final installment, “The Last Friday,” is in production), acting (recent roles include “War of the Worlds,” “Anaconda”) and professional basketball.
No, he wasn’t drafted by the Lakers or Clippers in his hometown L.A. But he has a few of those former players on his BIG3 professional 3-on-3 league that he founded with entertainment exec and longtime collaborator Jeff Kwatinetz in 2017.
“It is crazy, without a doubt,” he said when asked what possessed him to get into professional sports. “The music and the movies is in my wheelhouse. Starting this league is the discovery channel, you know. You learn a lot real fast and we’re fighting off an 800-pound gorilla called the NBA. But to me, I want to be looked at as a true artist, not just a rapper or movie star or whatever. Just somebody who was creative in a lot of different areas and understood as an artist that brought something new to the table.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source tucson.com ’
