5. Ice CubeAmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted
It’s probably my third favourite rap album of all time. Again, I think it’s a really overlooked record: I think it’s so good because he was produced by The Bomb Squad. I remember being shocked by that at the time; for some reason I didn’t think that Ice Cube and Public Enemy got on, so I was quite surprised that The Bomb Squad had produced it. But you could just tell that their production values were there straight away, and it would open up into some kind of expression, and then it would close back down, and you could hear all these things going on in the background. This was when Ice Cube was still kind of known as just being a rapper, and for me this was his peak. There are songs on there like ‘The Nigga Ya Love To Hate’ which is just amazing; the title track; and I think one of my favourite songs on there is ‘Once Upon A Time In The Projects’ which is just fucking brilliant. That was always the thing about Public Enemy: they always ruled because they had the best rapper in the world; Chuck D was the best rapper and everything bounced off that, and that’s why this album is great – Ice Cube, here, is most connected and it feels so important that he gets his point across. He’s not disconnected, he’s not being arrogant, it’s just pure aggression. I never see this listed as one of the best rap albums of all time, but for me it’s just a brilliant record. It’s up there with some of the Kool Keith stuff, it’s up there with Public Enemy, it’s up there with NWA. It’s just brilliant. And it’s really sad that he didn’t go onto do more work with the Bomb Squad, because it was obviously a marriage made in the projects and it was fucking amazing. It’s another lost classic that just doesn’t get mentioned anymore.
