Amadeo wrote:dead prez wrote:He fell of horribly, but having great mic presenc/delivery can easily make up for 'great" lyrics. As far as the beats that still part of the album, so you can't take it away from him, now if you meant who's the better emcee...
No, you can't really praise him for the beats, as he contributes very little to them. He doesn't write them... every beat he raps over is sampled.
You can't praise him for lyrics. He is a boring, crap lyricist.
The only thing you can really say about Ice Cube is he has a good voice for rap.
Wow yeah right.
Lyrics is not all about tangling words together and having punchlines and wordplay in every verse. Lyrics is also about delivery, and the message it has, and Ice Cube was a reverend for the ghetto at that time, his message was more powerful than any witnessed in terms of what it did for his people. Chuck D of all people labeled him as a prophet ffs.
Calling Ice Cube a crap lyricist is very silly, Ice Cube was the voice behind NWA, all those historic tracks were all his, including Eazy's.
You can call him boring, but not many would agree with you, including Eminem who's music was obviously heavily influenced by Ice Cube's, just listen to The Predator and it's so obvious where quite a bit of Eminem's early concepts and delivery in his songs came from.
Say what you like, however if you wanna talk about sales, impact, influence, critics reviews, then Ice Cube had the most successful run if you wanna look back at Hip Hop history. For the record, just like Eminem did in his run, Ice Cube had a movie too, a much better one at that in BoyzNtheHood.
btw. I find it very ironic that you say half his shit wouldn't play if it wasn't for his great beats (and then you cite It was a good day to prove your point).....umm...you do know that in hip hop circles it was Ice Cube's beats that were criticized as not being up to the quality of others areas of his game...that was THE main problem with his albums, in that there was hardly any diversity and quality to level with his vocals. The irony goes further as "It was a good day" is seen by a lot as THE song that changed Ice Cube's style all together and these type of beats are the reason why "Lethal Injection" is disputed as whether or not it was a classic album.
ps. i just re-read this and this seems a little aggressive, but i don't intend for it to be. no disrespect homie, just debating.