Live Review: Ice Cube, B Wise @ ICC Sydney

It must be pretty daunting to support the most infamous rapper on the planet – a veteran considered a legend not only throughout the hip-hop world but in Hollywood as well.

If local Sydney prodigy B Wise was feeling this pressure, he didn’t show it in a set that was engaging, energetic and most of all, confident. Given most of the crowd seemed largely unfamiliar with his work, it was a smart move to start with the set with something familiar.

Accordingly, his DJ delivered some classic hip-hop cuts that clearly warmed the crowd up. Boasting a steady, sing-song flow, the Nigerian-Australian emcee delivered a strong yet short set culled from his two full-length albums Jamie and Area Famous. Highlights included the mesmerising Flex On and the smoothed out Sandcastles which gave B-Wise the bandwidth to flex a more muscular flow. 

Once upon a time, Ice Cube was considered downright dangerous – an enemy of law enforcement and polite society more generally. These days, however, the unpredictability and menace that Cube used to exude have now been replaced by something else – the ability to be an absolute entertainer.

Sure, the trademark scowl was still there but now it was accompanied by a wink and a broad grin as the rapper extraordinaire took the audience on a journey through his entire forty-year career. From his ‘newer’ material, and by newer, I mean the last 15 years or so, it was the cuts from last year’s Man Down that really shone.

The synth-heavy funk of Rollin At Twilight had arms in the air across the arena, and bouncy set opener It’s My Ego set the tone for the night perfectly. So Sensitive, Cube’s, ahem… ’direct’… take on modern sensitivities got one of the most raucous reactions of the night and proved once and for all that this wasn’t an artist solely trading off past glories. Add to this Cube’s Too Short collab Ain’t Got No Haters and a red hot eruption in What Is A Pyroclastic Flow, and the second half of Cube’s career proved itself to be remarkably memorable.

Talking of past glories, there was plenty to choose from in a set that weaved back and forth through a truly mind-blowing streak of classic hip-hop.

Cube’s film career was put directly in the spotlight with massive renditions of Friday and Natural Born Killers getting people out of their seats and screaming the hooks into the air. Ghetto Bird, Bop Gun and This Is How We Do It ably represented Cube’s G-Funk masterpiece Lethal Injection while a frantic Wicked and the massive bounce of Check Yo Self were a welcome reminder of the breakout success of Predator.

For the absolute highlights, however, we had to travel a bit further back in time. No Vaseline, oft hailed as the greatest diss track of all time, had lost none of its caustic fury while The N***a Ya Love Ta Hate turned Cube the middle-aged movie star back into the bar spitting rhyme animal who brought the east and west coasts together at the dawn of the 90s.

In fact, my only criticism of the whole show was that Cube’s early solo output could have been represented more prominently – especially the superlative debut AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. 

Cube didn’t start his life as a solo artist and his trip down memory lane to the output of a little known group called N.W.A. was met with absolute mayhem.  Straight Outta Compton? Check. Gangsta Gangsta – check. Dopeman – hell yeah. And, of course, a Cube show wouldn’t be a Cube show without a spirited rendition of the song that made him and his co-conspirators public enemies number one for the FBI: F*ck Tha Police.

Seeing an audience made up of ages 55+ to somewhere around 8-9 years old screaming out the lyrics to a song that once upon a time caused one of the hugest kurfuffles in music history was absolutely surreal and living proof that even the most controversial of outsider ideas has the power to eventually enter mainstream consciousness.

Overall, the show was visually spectacular with huge video screens taking the crowd down memory lane with images from across Cube’s storied career and visuals that aided the delivery of the tunes (Go To Church particularly benefited with the arena turned into a 4-20 cathedral). Also welcome was Cube’s faithful collaborator WC (a west coast legend in his own right) who played the role of hype man and whose left field flow contrasted nicely with Cube’s manic bark. 

Cube himself can still throw down vocally with the best of them. He was at pains to point out that his mic was on for the whole show and that he would never use backing tapes as a crutch. Once an emcee always an emcee. Hip-hop has changed since Ice Cube and his contemporaries burst onto the scene all those years ago, and to many the gangster in black might be yesterday’s news. Well, based on this super tight and powerful performance, Cube isn’t quite ready to relinquish the crown.