The 33rd episode of People’s Party With Talib Kweli has arrived. In today’s episode, West Coast rap legend, gangsta rap pioneer, and rapper-to-actor transition icon Ice Cube stops by the Party set to chop it up with the host about his 30-year career, his three-on-three basketball league, his films, and the often incendiary social commentary that made his music both controversial and wildly popular.
Of course, he wasn’t always the personable business owner and family movie star that many fans know him as. Once upon a time, he was also an incisive battle rapper who was both feared and revered by his fans and his peers. But even gangsters grow up eventually, which is why Cube squashed one of his most notorious feuds with Chicago rapper Common, building their relationship to the point that the two rappers appeared together playing best friends in Barbershop 3.
“Sometimes, you have a beef with somebody and you squash it but it’s not really squashed,” Cube explains. “It’s still that thing in the back of your head, saying, “Man, f*ck that…’ It wasn’t that way with Common and myself. It was truly squashed.” He goes on to run down how he wound up putting Common in the most recent Barbershop. “We needed these different characters for Barbershop. We knew we wasn’t going to get Michael Ealy back and we was looking for a guy who could be that and bring a different presence. When [Common’s] name came up, I was like, ‘Hell yeah.'”
Cube lists the qualities that made Common the perfect candidate for the role, complimenting him by saying, “He’s a Chicago dude, a good dude, he’s for the culture. He’s improved it over and over. He not into beefing with nobody and we need to show the world that no matter what happened in the past that we could still work together and be brothers… It was just a misunderstanding.”
People’s Party is a weekly interview show hosted by Talib Kweli with big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics. Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.