#33: Ice Cube — Death Certificate (1991)
Los Angeles, CA — Lench Mob/Priority Records
Uncle Sam’s deceased corpse lays in the morgue, shrouded by the star spangled banner while AmeriKKKa’s most wanted MC looks on with a look on his face half of despise, half of hatred. After a turbulent departure from N.W.A. and a successful start to his solo career, Ice Cube hit the scene with an album widely regarded as his best: 1991’s Death Certificate. As the title could imply, the imagery of death is very present on this record, not just because of IC’s gangsta rap affiliations, as one would expect, but also as an overarching theme in this entire oeuvre.
See, its twenty-one tracks are split in two different sides, not just phisically due to the vinyl format but also conceptually, as immediately explained in the intro track, The Funeral: “Niggas are in the state of emergency/ The Death Side, a mirrored image of where we are today/ The Life Side, a vision of where we need to go/ So sign your death certificate”. The Death Side revolves around grizzly accounts of urban life, its point is to illustrate where Ice’s coming from and help the listener to establish a scenario in their head, a narrative proper. The Life Side, then, is of a more imaginative nature, where he allows himself to ramble a bit more and loosely suggests solutions to such problems.
Now, even though some do consider this a proper concept album, I personally wouldn’t go that far. Its “death vs life” thing is present, sure, as a general motif maybe, but not really enough as to really establish that much of a difference, and honestly if it wasn’t for each side’s intros and outros (and the fact the he straight up tells us about the concept right off the bat) I doubt many people would even notice the divide. Still, it is a thematically and aesthetically solid record in its majority, true to its vision and intent, and is by very far the closest we’ve got to a true concept album so far.
Ice Cube’s rapping skills, of course, stand out as maybe the best that the west coast had to offer at the time. He’s still barking away just as much, but now with a certain added subtlety relatively to his N.W.A. days, a certain flair, which gives his flow and delivery more complexity than before, and while he does not go too deep into metaphors and similes, he’s capable of some witty worplaying and is able to pack a mean punchline when he wants to. For some insight on what his general writing style is like, we can look at the opening verse of The Wrong Nigga To Fuck Wit, Death Certificate’s second track:
Goddamn, it’s a brand new payback
From the straight gangsta mack in straight gangsta black
How many motherfuckers gotta pay?
Went to the shelf and dusted off the AK
Caps gotta get peeled
Cause “The Nigga Ya Love To Hate” still can “Kill at Will” […]
“Fuck you, Ice Cube”, that’s what the people say
Fuck America, still with the triple K […]
Fuck R&B and the runnin’ man
I’m the one that stand, with the gun in hand
Make sure before you buck wit’ duck quick
Punk, ’cause I’m the wrong nigga to fuck with
(“I’ma let y’all know one thing man”)
His bars are simple yet dense, containing aggressive unapologetic statements and a myriad of quick references to his previous work and to going-ons of the hip-hop scene at large. It’s not a style that relies heavily on delicate poetics and subtleness, but rather on blunt force, on bars that hit you quickly and precisely, veritable lyrical one-two combos straight to the chin — though this doesn’t mean that his bars are simple and unelaborate, but rather that they’re able to meld nuance and aggressiveness together. His general style of delivery does get a little samey here and there, which is aggravated by the fact that there’s only one song with guest features in this entire thing, but it’s not really worse than most solo acts we’ve seen so far.
Most of all on the Death Side, he’ll develop a whole scenario out of short, concise descriptions and narratives, and what I like the most is that he not only unveils a description of the suburban cityscape he comes from, he conclusively situates himself within in, both as an active character and a passive observer. You don’t just imagine South Central L.A. and its tribulations, you effective learn about it, you are there for a couple of minutes. It’s that kind of not-necessarily-linear storytelling, that narrative subtlety that doesn’t really announce itself as much as it just, you know, works its magic. The skits, finally, are the perfect cherry to top off the exquisite cake IC gifts us: from the most serious and death/life oriented ones such as The Funeral, Death and The Birth to the randomly comedic ones such as Robin Lench, not to mention the ones that reside inside larger tracks, the many little dramatic interludes work like a charm to give this album the very final dusting of spice it needs.
Production-wise, this is very solid and consistent. Ice’s debut solo effort, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, was produced entirely by the Bomb Squad, at the time still the most important producer team by far. For Death Certificate he chose to recruit old acquaintances Sir Jinx, who was Ice’s first ever collaborator and vice versa, and The Boogiemen, a short-lived squad composed of DJ Pooh, Bobcat and Rashad Coes, who came up with a style still reminiscent of Bomb Squad’s but with an extra serving of that west coast funk, that tropical groove that’s part of the essence of classic gangsta rap to this day. The beats in general each have their own identity of sorts, one or two central samples or timbres, but still all follow a consistently recognizable general aesthetic. I’ve read people saying that the beats are somewhat samey and interchangeable, something that I don’t really agree with even though I can see where they’re coming from. If I was to make one critique toward the production it would be that it can be a little overbearing sometimes, too busy, and the rapping itself becomes a little confused and sonically entangled.
Finally, though, it is time to address the very large elephant in the room. No matter how good this album is and how influent it was in its time, it will never be rid of the very, let’s say, politically uncomfortable values it so sincerely espouses at times. There is no way around it: along with its remarkably intelligent politics and morals, this album also displays overtly mysoginistic, homophobic and prejudiced content, usually in a disconcertingly gratuitous manner, both sprinkled on otherwise OK lyrics, or concentrated in a few especially offensive tracks.
Songs like Givin’ Up The Nappy Dug Out, where Ice threatens an imaginary honky suburban dad with the prospect of running a train on his underaged slut daughter, or Black Korea, where he attacks korean people in a horribly racist way for the crime of, guess what, being racist toward black people, quickly became instant skips in the week or so I spent repeatedly jamming this album; not to speak of No Vaseline, his famous, and massively overrated in my opinion, diss to former N.W.A. bandmates, that consists of one genuinely very good first verse followed by two more that consists mostly of descriptions of Ice’s fantasies of MC Ren, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and Dr. Dre having anal intercourse, complete with calling their manager out for being a jewish white devil that should be shot in the head. It is what it is, though, and, as is the case in a regrettably big part of hip-hop and popular culture at large, you gotta take the good with the bad.
Overall this is a remarkably solid record, with few and far-between flaws that didn’t really spoil the experience as a whole to me, as erky as they are on their own. It’s easily one of the records of most solid quality we’ve seen so far, and for good reason it is considered one of the brightest shining gems on the illustrious crown of west coast hip-hop.
Favorite tracks
A Bird In The Hand: A legitimately touching, bittersweet account of Cube’s own experience as a young father with few options in life. It’s relatively short but very solid and invested, with an absolute all-timer of a beat to boot. “Do I have to sell me a whole lotta crack/ For decent shelter and clothes on my back?/ Or should I just wait for help from Bush?/ Or Jesse Jackson, and Operation PUSH? […] So now you put the feds against me/ ’Cause I couldn’t follow the plan of the presidency/ I never get love again/ But blacks are too fuckin’ broke to be Republican”
Alive on Arrival: A harrowing tale, narrated from the point of view of a young man living his last bitter moments in a crowded hospital after getting shot in an unrelated gang clash, denied a minimum of dignity and comfort by the police. Apart from having the exact same gist as Rapaz Comum, a track by Racionais MCs, the single best hiphop group to ever exist, it’s one of the album’s dramatic and poetic heights.
I Wanna Kill Sam: A politically uplifting and emotionally angry rant about how the industrial-military complex, here personified by Uncle Sam as a violent home invader, this one might be my single favorite track off of this whole album. The incredible beat(s) to be found here do nothing but further elevate its ownyness.
Color Blind: Death Certificate’s mandatory posse cut, this one features a veritable grand team of rappers, including a young, still not solo flying Coolio. The beat is incredible, sort of uncanny, hands down the most different on this whole deal, and as if the good to excellent verses weren’t enough, the many flows and deliveries complement each other to near perfection.
