The film and TV career of Ice Cube

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Welcome to Hip Hop Movie Club, the show that harmonizes the rhythm of hip hop with the magic of movies.

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Today we're discussing the film and TV career of hip hop legend Ice Cube.

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We are three old heads who put their old heads together to vibe on these films for you.

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I'm DynoWright, podcaster, filmmaker,

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longtime hip-hop fan, and without these next two guys, I am Kool-Aid without the sugar.

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I'm JB 80s and 90s nostalgia junkie

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longtime hip-hop fan and

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One two three and I come with the wicked style and you know that I'm from the wicked crew

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act like you knew Cuz I got

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everybody jumping to the voodoo kick it

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Yes sir, yes sir.

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Nice, nice.

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I'm Boogie, a DJ, long time hip hop fan.

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And I remember when the subject of this episode first hit the scene,

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I used to dress just like him in the videos, minus the Jheri curl.

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I mean, I stayed with a Raiders, a Kings or a White Sox fitted.

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In this episode, we are taking a close look at Ice Cube's lengthy acting career and beyond.

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Here are three takeaways on Ice Cube.

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One, Ice Cube is more versatile as an actor than you might realize.

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Two, even as his acting career has evolved in surprising ways,

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he has stayed true and authentic to himself.

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Number three, his career also evolved to include founding the Big Three,

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a basketball league with former NBA players

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and other entrepreneurial projects.

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All right, let's get right into Ice Cube.

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He's forged quite a career for himself.

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He's starting out as a hip hop star and taking the world by storm on the big screen.

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Made his debut in the 1991 film Boyz N the Hood,

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which was directed by John Singleton and he played Doughboy.

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And right away it was just a smooth transition from music to acting.

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and that opened up so many more doors for him

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and an amazing career.

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Boogie, you want to take us through a little bit more of the versatility

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that he has shown as an actor from that role and going

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forward and how he's become the household name as an

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actor as well?

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Yeah, sure.

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Absolutely.

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So, you know, he's played in some action roles.

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He's played opposite JLo, Jennifer Lopez in the film Anaconda, which, you know, is of course about a giant anaconda.

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Starred in Three Kings, which is a movie that takes place in the Middle East.

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He plays a soldier with a group of other soldiers who are trying to steal some gold that belonged to Saddam Hussein.

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He played in a sequel, xXx State of the Union, the sequel to the

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triple X franchise that starred Vin Diesel.

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So you know what kind of role that is.

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And then he's got some buddy cop roles,

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And then he's got some buddy cop roles, All About the Benjamins opposite Mike Epps

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in the Ride Along franchise with Kevin Hart,

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some dramatic roles in Higher Learning.

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Another John Singleton film, which

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we've talked about before, and it takes place on a college campus, Trespass,

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which also features another hip hop artist, Ice Cube.

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Ice T, I'm sorry.

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The Glass Shield.

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And then he's got some family-friendly movies like, you know, the Are We There Yet?

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and his follow-up sequel, The Long Shots,

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which also stars him as a football coach.

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Keke Palmer plays the team's quarterback in that film, a pretty funny movie.

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So yeah, he's, you know, he's done a lot of roles and in most

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of this generation, the younger generation probably doesn't even know that he was in...

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a hip hop artist, they probably just think he's always been an actor in some way, or form,

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or a producer or writer of some sort in film.

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They probably didn't even realize that he was started off penning a lot of

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the lyrics for the group NWA and having his own solo career, very successful solo career as well.

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But yeah, he's definitely a household name.

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Like he's pretty well known.

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Yeah, big time.

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Big time.

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DynoWright, any of those movies resonate with you?

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I think the one that resonates the most is Friday.

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And maybe people know him from memes related to Friday.

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that movie in particular, and we did review this movie, so you can go back and check that out.

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But cult classic, it was funny then.

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It's still funny now.

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And there are still times where I think about

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or use lines in that movie in my daily speech.

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Absolutely.

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I always run afraid of running out of milk at home.

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I don't have milk with no cereal or Kool-Aid with no sugar.

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It's like life lesson.

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Make sure you have both.

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah, so many pop culture references, the bye Felicia we talked about at length.

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How you gonna get fired on your day off?

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That still hits home, it's so funny.

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if I've ever been fired on my day off.

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I don't think so, but I have to think about that.

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How do you get fired on your day off?

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man, I got fired on my on lunch break.

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Think about he went from starring as Doughboy

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and that was 1992 or 91 and then his next real big project was

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writing and co-starring in Friday.

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Amazing! And this sets it sets him

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Amazing! And this sets it sets him

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up for such such success Because it's such a good movie and when we talked about this in our review of it, but it

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It is a stoner comedy, but there is a heart to it.

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Especially in the end, we see

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themes of

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father-son love that

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it's hard to find sometimes in movies about

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urban experiences.

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Yeah.

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The name Deebo lives on, like the wide receiver for the 49ers that Boogie's a big fan of.

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Deebo Samuel, he got his nickname from Deebo, his character, Tiny Lister.

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It just keeps.

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Whenever I need to hide something, I think “oh Deebo’s coming!”

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I gotta hide something.

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Yup.

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It’s funny, it’s

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like, you know, you anytime you hear like something squeaky, it always makes you think of that daggone bike.

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He was riding on.

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I remember I was at work and something was in the vent, something in the vent was squeaking.

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I kept looking up like, and I kind of pictured a bike coming down the street.

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It's like, wait a minute, bike coming between the cubicles.

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Ha ha ha ha!

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Ah man. Yeah.

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I think Ice Cube did a lot to put these buddy movies on the map

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with his chemistry with

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Chris Tucker and then he's done films more recently with Kevin Hart.

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He obviously Mike Epps.

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Yeah, I mean, he had that formula and he was very relatable, as we like to say.

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He did a lot of those buddy comedies.

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There's a lot of stuff about friendship and bonding throughout his filmography.

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Mm-hmm.

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And then the versatility we talk about with fatherhood, you know, with Are We There Yet?

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and The Long Shots as well?

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Yeah, he's done all sorts of roles.

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We were prepping for this and thought, wait, he's done all sorts of things.

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And The Are We There Yet?

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movies are hilarious.

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If you have never watched them, I highly recommend that they're hilarious.

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The way he interacts with those kids, it cracks me up.

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Yeah.

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and the Barbershop series as well.

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It talks about a lot of cultural issues.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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the Barbershop series.

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Yeah, I forgot about those.

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I didn't even mention those.

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And I like those movies too.

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Yeah, and I love the Barbershop movies.

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He plays a very positive character in that franchise, like a pivotal member of the

community.

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And the barbershop just in general is...

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it has significance in the urban community because it's a meeting place.

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It's a central location where men go and they don't just go there to get a haircut.

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They go there to talk about sports, politics, bettering in the community.

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All sorts of topics are discussed at the barbershop.

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So that was very key for that film series to make its way.

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Onto the screen, yeah, I definitely enjoy watching those movies.

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I'll watch them whenever they're on.

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So another thing that we mentioned, takeaway number two was even as his acting career has evolved,

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he stayed true and authentic to himself.

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He has that edge to him,

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which kind of speaks to his upbringing and triumphing over tragedy.

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He's been so authentic in his ways and in his mannerisms and the way that he speaks.

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So, you know, I think that's just a great...

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quality about Ice Cube.

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He projects how he really is, authentically.

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Yeah, he definitely comes across like even in the funny movies,

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even when he's being funny, it's like he's still himself.

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Like you still see Ice Cube in there.

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There's no over the top thing about it.

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And I think back to like, you know, I was watching the

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21 Jump Street in its subsequent sequel.

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He plays the captain, I think it's the captain.

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in that movie, he's supervising the Jump Street crew.

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And he is hilarious.

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Like, he's just, he's like so hard on those guys, but it's so funny.

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Like, the way he, the way he comes down on them is hilarious.

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But you can see that, like, it's just like,

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it's like, even if it wasn't a character, he's like, you could still definitely see him in there.

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Like, it was very, it comes across very authentic.

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Yeah, you can definitely see parallels between his trajectory,

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his career trajectory from the hardcore rapper to a mainstream actor and producer.

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Like he starts off rigid and hard.

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He's got that hard exterior,

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but then he kind of softens up and shows his versatility and likeability in most of his roles.

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And not for nothing, ironically, he

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wrote very critical lyrics about the police and then,much like Ice-T, starred in a lot of things as a cop.

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And pulled it off.

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I mean, he also pulled it off too.

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So, a credit to his acting ability.

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Yep.

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It's funny because I think back to

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one of the trip, the triple X state of the union,

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which I mentioned earlier, and they show him like they get like, he plays like a ex military

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that they're trying to bring into this secret mission.

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And they're doing a profile on this character.

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And they're like, you know, they're going over his resume,

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like all of the bad stuff he's done, like he had a troubled past and et cetera.

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And they put up his picture of him as he's younger.

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And this is actual

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NWA picture with the jheri curl.

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I think it was either a Raiders hat or a Kings hat that he had on.

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I'm like, Oh My God Every time I see that, I can't help but to laugh.

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It's not even meant to be funny, but it's just like, yeah, that's really him.

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He's got the typical like old school NWA mean mug on.

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Hehehehehe

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Ah man.

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Yeah, Cube's done so much work.

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He's even done, you he's done some voice work.

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He's done just so much in the entertainment industry.

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But our final takeaway is his career

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also has evolved to include founding the Big Three, a basketball league with former NBA players

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and other entrepreneurial projects.

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Dyno Wright, you want to talk a little bit about the Big Three, what you know about it

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and other projects that Cube has worked on?

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It's an interesting project

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and not meant to compete with the NBA, it's almost like a nice supplement

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because they have a lot of former NBA players,

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a lot of high-level college

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players, even Dr.

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J.

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Julius Erving is one of the coaches of one of these teams.

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And so it's like three on three basketball.

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so it fits in nicely with your regular NBA and college basketball.

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in your life,

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but also he also made news when Caitlin Clark was coming out of Iowa

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offered a million, I think,

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to join the Big 3 because the salaries of the WNBA aren't

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comparable to like NBA salaries.

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so he raised some interesting points about pay equity and stuff like that.

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He was unsuccessful in enticing Caitlin Clark to go to the big three, but

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it should be pointed out too that a women's Big 3 type basketball league was also founded in the wake

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of this.

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so he was there in the beginning talking about better opportunities for women in sports.

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So kudos to him for that.

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Yeah.

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I'm sure Caitlin Clark's made up more than the million in her endorsement deals and NIL even back in college, but that was a kind gesture.

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Yeah, for sure.

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Yeah, definitely.

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founded a production company, Cube Vision, and so a lot of his later projects are coming out of there.

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Which makes sense, all the power he has in Hollywood.

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That's something that makes a lot of sense.

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Yeah, and did you know, we talked about this prior to the show,

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but going back to the basketball, he was honored with the Ice Cube Impact Award named after him by the Naismith

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Basketball Hall of Fame.

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As we researched this, we didn't realize that

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he literally has an award named after him for his contributions to basketball, which is kind of cool.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, community basketball support.

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Yep.

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And he leaves a legacy like O'Shea Jackson, his real name,

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fans of The Mandalorian and newer films and TV series will recognize Ice Cube's son O'Shea Jackson Jr.

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in a lot of things.

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He looks very similar to his Pops so you can spot him.

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Played him in the Straight Outta Compton biopic that we also reviewed.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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Not without his controversies, both as a young man and as a current man.

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was controversial back in the day for his lyrics and NWA, but lately controversial for sort of hanging or sort of aligning himself with...

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Trump, and other people in the Trump ecosystem.

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So yeah, make what you will of that.

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And some anti-Semitism.

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Complicated.

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Complicated right?

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Yeah.

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There’s no denying his contributions to cinema and hip hop.

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yep, that's why we're profiling him here.

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Because again, he's got a wide breadth of entertainment contributions, which is to be celebrated.

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As we record this, we are - upcoming screening event we have at good ol' SteelStacks is Boyz N the Hood in November.

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So that's all going to be all over our socials.

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And we can see Boyz N the Hood on the big screen.

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So.

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in 4K, brand new.

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Ding, ding, ding, ding, upgrades have been made to the Frank Banko Alehouse cinemas.

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So we're excited about that.

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Our man Anthony making it happen.

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And we are gonna have a very

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informative and engaging panel discussion about

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the social and cultural impact of Boyz N The Hood

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with some regional professors in Lehigh Valley.

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representing the likes of Kutztown University, Lafayette College, Northampton Community College, and more.

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So that's an event you won't want to miss on November 13th.

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Yep.

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Definitely.

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If you haven’t seen the film, definitely try to make it out.

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If you have seen the film, come see it in 4K.

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Come see it in 4K!

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And stay for the discussion, because you're to get something out of it.

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I guarantee it.

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Hip Hop Movie Club is produced by your HHMC's JB, Boogie and Dyno Wright.

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Theme music by Boogie.

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And as we mentioned on November 13th at SteelStacks in Bethlehem,

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we are presenting a screening of Boyz in the Hood with a special panel discussion.

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Tickets available at SteelStacks.org.

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We're on Instagram, Facebook and Threads at Hip Hop Movie Club.

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And whether you're listening to the podcast or watching us on YouTube, please give us a

follow.

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It's a real power up for us.

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Thanks for tuning in.

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Remember, don't hate, motivate.

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Go BooGie! Go BooGie!

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Nice!

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I am motivated now.

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Yessir, yessir.

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