{"id":88,"date":"2018-12-13T00:37:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/?page_id=88"},"modified":"2018-12-13T00:55:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:55:04","slug":"ice-cube-and-it-was-a-good-day","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/ice-cube-and-it-was-a-good-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice Cube and &#8220;It Was A Good Day&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Ice Cube<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ice Cube, born O\u2019Shea Jackson, was one of the first members of N.W.A. and is known as a highly controversial figure due to his extensive politically fueled and profane raps. In 1989, he parted from the group after managerial disputes and went on to pursue an independent career [1]. In 1992, he released the single \u201cIt Was A Good Day\u201d which departs from his usual aggressive style. He recorded the track while living in Los Angeles during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and released the song and music video shortly after. The LA riots began after the acquittal of four LAPD Officers charged with brutally beating Rodney King, an African American motorist. Anti-police protestors took to the streets in what became the largest period of civil unrest in American history [2]. Given the context surrounding its release, \u201cIt Was A Good Day\u201d projects a sense of hope for the black community, but Ice Cube is only able to do this by entering into a fictional realm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h4UqMyldS7Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ice Cube&#8217;s &#8220;It Was A Good Day&#8221; music video [3].<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>A \u2018good day\u2019?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ice Cube uses various musical and visual symbols to hint that the \u2018good day\u2019 he describes is far from reality. In the music video, the sampled backbeat from the Isley Brothers\u2019 \u201cFootsteps in the Dark\u201d begins as a little girl opens the gate to enter her house. The placement of the sample over the action of opening a gate suggests that when the song begins, we exit from reality and enter a fictional world. It becomes clearer at the end of the video that this \u2018good day\u2019 is unattainable. The last line of the song &#8212; \u201cHey wait, wait a minute Pooh. Stop this shit. What the fuck I\u2019m thinking about? &#8212; suggests that Ice Cube\u2019s narrative of a \u2018good day\u2019 is in fact \u201cshit\u201d and he questions why he is thinking of such an unattainable world. The last line in the song is cut out of the music video. Instead, the video visually conveys how this \u2018good day\u2019 is fictional. Ice Cube arrives home after his \u2018good day\u2019 and steps out of his car. As he walks toward his house, the sounds of helicopters, sirens, and guns emerge, as police cars and officers arrive in his driveway and surround him. The chaos invoked by the sounds and images on screen is a clear shift away from the fairly simple musical texture and slow cuts throughout most of the video. The shift represents reality prevailing. As Michael Odell writes in a 2005 article for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blender<\/span><\/i><b><i>, <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cthe song\u2019s mellow mood, just like any peaceful interlude in the \u2018hood,\u2019 cannot last forever&#8221; [4]. The abundance of police officers that surround Ice Cube could also be referencing the criticism that the four police officers who beat and arrested Rodney King used excessive force. The song ends after Ice Cube slams the gate of his house behind him, alluding to the opening of the gate at the beginning of the video.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this fictional \u2018good day,\u2019 the theoretical attainability of the events that take place, along with the easy going rhythm of the song, project a sense of realistic hope. Ice Cube doesn\u2019t rap about a completely fantastical, utopian world. Instead, his \u2018good day\u2019 entails eating the breakfast his mother makes, playing basketball with his friends, and hanging out with the girl he likes. Further, he raps about the challenges of life in the hood, but notes how on this \u2018good day,\u2019 they aren\u2019t a problem. For example, in the second verse, he raps, \u201cSaw the police and they rolled right past me\u201d and \u201cNobody I know got killed in South Central LA.\u201d He didn\u2019t \u201ceven have to use [his] A.K.\u201d The easygoing vibe of the song reinforces this sense of hope. The song\u2019s backbeat is an instrumental sample from the Isley Brothers\u2019 \u201cFootsteps in the Dark.\u201d The slow, groovy beat evokes a laid-back and relatively peaceful mood, mirroring what it is like to have a \u2018good day.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fictional world in \u201cIt Was A Good Day\u201d creates a space for Ice Cube to explore his own agency. A visual trope that conveys this idea is the repeating shot of Ice Cube driving around South Central Los Angeles in his 1964 bright green Chevrolet Impala. As described briefly in the introduction, the highway system helped to physically cut off neighborhoods, like South Central Los Angeles, from other more prosperous parts of the city. Given this context, various scholars have examined how hip hop artists use cars in their music videos to project ideas of mobility and freedom. For example, scholar Robert Farris Thompson argues that with its promise of freedom and mobility, \u201cautomotive flash\u201d is a symbol of \u201cblack quest\u201d [5]. In this case, Ice Cube\u2019s bright green lowrider becomes a symbol of him taking ownership of the space and searching for a better, or \u2018good\u2019 day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ice Cube\u2019s fictional world also creates a space for him to dictate his own narrative. Scenes in the music video depict events that take place during Ice Cube\u2019s \u2018good day.\u2019 Dispersed between these clips are shots of Ice Cube rapping in a dimly-lit room, wearing black clothing, black gloves, and black sunglasses. Inserting these shots places emphasis on the fact that Ice Cube is narrating this story and consequently exerting control. But as the fictional world shifts back to reality at the end of the video, the narrator shifts, too. After arriving home, Ice Cube steps out of his car and the video cuts to a wide shot of him walking toward his house. In this shot, the camera is positioned behind tree branches, giving the illusion of an outsider looking in. The final shot in the video pans out from the house and again hides behind the dark branches. The framing of these shots suggest that with a return back to reality, a new narrator has taken Ice Cube\u2019s place. Ice Cube has lost control. He is surrounded by the police, physically trapped, and voiceless. The ominous narrator could be representative of the people and forces that have controlled and unfairly dictated the fate of black communities. In the aftermath of the turbulent and violent Rodney King riots, Ice Cube\u2019s fictional \u2018good day\u2019 extends hopefulness for a time when black communities can take back their voice and dictate their own narrative.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">___________________________<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[1] Erlewine, Stephen, \u201cIce Cube: Biography,\u201d allmusic.com. Accessed Dec. 6, 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[2] Felker-Kantor, Max, \u201cThe 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion: \u2018No Justice, No Peace,\u2019\u201d osu.edu. May, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[3]\u00a0IceCubeVEVO. \u201cIce Cube \u2013 It Was A Good Day (Official Video)\u201d. YouTube video, 5:12. Posted Feb, 2009.\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h4UqMyldS7Q<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[4] Odell, Michael, \u201cThe Greatest Songs Ever! It Was a Good Day,\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blender. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">April, 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[5] Kajikawa, Loren, \u201c\u2018Let Me Ride\u2019: Gangsta Rap\u2019s Drive into the Popular Mainstream.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounding Race in Rap Songs, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">University of California Press, p. 85-117. 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ice Cube Ice Cube, born O\u2019Shea Jackson, was one of the first members of N.W.A. and is known as a highly controversial figure due to&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/ice-cube-and-it-was-a-good-day\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ice Cube and &#8220;It Was A Good Day&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4280,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-88","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-01\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}