Ice Cube

Ice Cube has always rapped like a man with his finger jabbing at your chest. O'Shea Jackson, born in 1969 and a Los Angeles native, started his first group, C.I.A., in 1986, then formed N.W.A with Eazy-E and Dr. Dre, where he was the lead rapper and wrote most of the words on Straight Outta Compton, the record that gave West Coast hip-hop its violent, confrontational identity.

A money dispute over the group's management sent him solo at the end of 1989, and the albums that followed, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, Death Certificate and The Predator, were blistering political rap that sold as well as critics praised them. "It Was A Good Day" flips the script completely: a laid-back, sun-dappled groove, as relaxed as he has ever sounded. It went top 40 on the Hot 100, alongside "Check Yo Self" and "You Know How We Do It".

By then he was already on screen, having debuted in Boyz n the Hood, and Friday and a long run of film work followed. He hasn't let go of the mic, though: Everythangs Corrupt, from 2018, carries "Arrest the President", as pointed as anything he wrote in his youth. N.W.A went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, and Cube got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame the following year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.