This was originally supposed to be a review of the re-release of Cube’s Lethal Injection album. However, it took just a few seconds of listening to realize that I had mistakenly obtained the clean version. Since, Cube often recorded entirely different lyrics for his “Wal-Mart” releases (as opposed to just “distorting” the profanity), I thought I’d go for the re-issue of Death Certificate instead.
Death Certificate is a compelling album in it’s own right. It preceded The Predator, reviewed right c’here, by about a year, but served as foreshadowing for the LA riots that would follow a few months later. It was originally released on Halloween 1991, during a time when Cube had forged an alliance with the controversial Nation of Islam. Even though the union was mostly for show, it certainly gave an added edge to an artist who was already being labeled as “everything that was wrong with rap”.
This was something of a gangsta rap concept album. It featured both a “Death” side and a “Life” side (that obviously played better on a cassette than a CD). The “Death” side looks at the rampant hopelessness and cynicism that was rampant in the young Black population at the time of its original release. The opening track, The Wrong N**** to F*** Wit, is one of Cube’s best ever. Sure, it features more of the violent barbs that were a staple in the genre at the time (“Cause you know when my nine goes buck/it’ll bust your head like a watermelon dropped from 12 stories up”). There’s also some very important social commentary as well (“Stop givin juice to the Raiders/Cause Al Davis, never paid us”).
Cube remains on the soapbox on excellent tracks like Givin Up… and Look Who’s Burnin. The former warns about promiscuous women and the latter looks at the importance of safe sex. Both manage to rise over the raunchy (and often funny-as-hell) delivery and succeed. “Message music” is still a hard sell in hip hop, but anytime you can squeeze lines about Vanessa Del Rio and The Heat-Mizer into back-to-back tracks, your audience will listen.
The “Death” side concludes with a more somber and brooding Cube looking at what some in the inner cities do to get paid on A Bird in the Hand. Its anti-President Bush (the first) and anti-Jesse Jackson stance are surprisingly relevant more than ten years later. Alive on Arrival takes us to the end of “Death”, as Cube gives a haunting first-person account of gangbanger who’s shot and the indifference he receives at the hands of a bureaucracy set up to treat the injured.
The “Life” side is ostensibly an entirely “new” album focusing on where the Black community needs to go. I Wanna Kill Sam is Cube fuming at the Government for their recruitment policies and their alleged absorption of the African-American culture into a homogenized society. (“Broke us down/Made us pray to his God”)
It is here where Death Certificate takes an even more extreme turn. Horny Lil’ Devil tackles the subject of interracial relationships. Black Korea is a short little interlude that looks at the prevalence of Korean shopkeepers in predominantly Black neighborhoods. True to the Game addresses the whole concept of African-Americans who are perceived to “sell out” their own community.
All three tracks present many of the same stereotypes and slurs that we, as African-Americans, have spent generations trying to dispel. Admittedly, it’s hard to tell where Ice Cube-the gangsta rapper and O’Shea Jackson-the taxpaying and responsible citizen begin and end. However, whatever messages Cube intended to send out on these three joints are stained with juvenile name-calling and epithets. Cube’s current embrace of the predominantly white movie industry (and the reciprocal goodwill received from a veritable cross-section of fans from all races, colors and creeds) just serves to muddy the waters further.
The “Life” side concludes with more of Cube on the top of his game. Color Blind is a hot little posse cut and covers the contradiction and consequences of wearing the wrong color at the wrong time. Listen for cameos from a very young WC and a not-washed-up-yet Coolio. Doing Dumb S*** evokes warm memories of growing up in the hood and all the dumb, uh, things we all did as kids. Us asks that Blacks help themselves to better their lives, instead of waiting for others to do so. Finally, the incendiary No Vaseline (the classic diss to N.W.A.) and the cautionary How to Survive in South Central wrap things up.
