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If Ice Cube’s first album, Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, was a paralyzing punch to the gut and his follow-up EP, Kill At Will, was a stultifying jab, Death Certificate was a knockout blow, a vicious right cross that put anyone who listened flat on their backs. It was 1991, and with this album, Cube not only solidified his stature as one of the best in the genre, he helped to cement the sound that would become identified with West Coast hip-hop.
Certificate was my first experience with a concept album. Reflecting the dominant audio format of the time, the cassette tape, it's arranged as two sides: The Death Side and the Life Side. The Death Side deals with gang violence, drug dealing, and sex: all topics anyone familiar with Cube since his days in N.W.A. would expect to find on an Ice Cube album. But it doesn’t take long to see that there’s something different going on here.
While his ghetto tableaus are just as vivid and uncompromisingly brash, he contextualizes the actions of the characters in his rhymes in way that never happened while he was a member of The World’s Most Dangerous Group. Now, instead of just presenting gangsters as unfuckwithable anti-heroes out for bitches and money, he expands the view to show us why a kid in the hood might feel that bangin’ and slangin’ is the only way to make a life for himself, and how that life so often ends behind bars or in blood.
The Life Side abandons all subtlety with regard to the album’s social and political agenda. Here, Cube treats issues as disparate as cultural assimilation, HIV/AIDS, the legacy of the slave trade, and economic exploitation with an unapologetically pro-black stance. While one might have expected to hear him lash out at targets like the U.S. government, which he does with vitriol, many were stunned and offended when he turned his infamous scowl towards Korean shopkeepers. Believing too many to be hostile to the black communities that supported them, he called out the “oriental, one-penny-countin’ motherfuckers” and threatened a nationwide boycott…or riots. Remember: this is before Los Angeles went up in flames in 1992.
While his ghetto tableaus are just as vivid and uncompromisingly brash, he contextualizes the actions of the characters in his rhymes in way that never happened while he was a member of The World’s Most Dangerous Group. Now, instead of just presenting gangsters as unfuckwithable anti-heroes out for bitches and money, he expands the view to show us why a kid in the hood might feel that bangin’ and slangin’ is the only way to make a life for himself, and how that life so often ends behind bars or in blood.
The Life Side abandons all subtlety with regard to the album’s social and political agenda. Here, Cube treats issues as disparate as cultural assimilation, HIV/AIDS, the legacy of the slave trade, and economic exploitation with an unapologetically pro-black stance. While one might have expected to hear him lash out at targets like the U.S. government, which he does with vitriol, many were stunned and offended when he turned his infamous scowl towards Korean shopkeepers. Believing too many to be hostile to the black communities that supported them, he called out the “oriental, one-penny-countin’ motherfuckers” and threatened a nationwide boycott…or riots. Remember: this is before Los Angeles went up in flames in 1992.
This album wasn’t just visionary, it was prescient. In these songs, Cube was a prophet speaking for and to his people. His message was founded on a bedrock of righteous anger common to plenty of African-Americans in Los Angeles and all over the U.S. The fact that he succeeded in voicing that rage while simultaneously delivering an excoriating message of personal responsibility speaks to his intimate knowledge of—and deep affection for—his audience.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that his words were set to such gorgeous sounds. The sonic palette for Death Certificate continued to draw on the manic energy laid out by the Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production team on his first album, but drew heavily on samples from Parliament and other funk masters, helping set the stage for the G-Funk era. Despite the warm, enveloping grooves, there are those who won’t be able to get past the sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia that many people have found alongside them. That’s a shame, because those who can place the lyrics in context and see this work in its proper light are in for some real fun. Almost 25 years later, I still get amped every time that I play it.
You really should listen to the entire album, but here are some highlights:
- #3 "My Summer Vacation" - Outlines the exportation of Los Angeles gang culture from California to the rest of the country via the crack cocaine epidemic of the 90s. St. Louis, my hometown, is the featured city, and it was the first time that I’d ever heard its name on a rap record. YES.
- #4 "Steady Mobbin’" - The first single off the album and classic, West Coast hip-hop. Can be thought of as a precursor to “It Was a Good Day”.
- #8 "A Bird In the Hand" - The “bird” in the title is a pun referencing a slang term for a kilogram of cocaine. Dope line: “We don’t wanna drug push, but a bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush.”
- #10 "Alive On Arrival" - First-person account of young man shot in a drive-by shooting and his experience trying to get medical care at a local public hospital. Disturbing for all the right reasons.
- #13 "I Wanna Kill Sam" - Yes, as in Uncle Sam. Features a nicely constructed allegory for the slave trade.
- #15 "Black Korea" - “Pay respect to the black fist, or we’ll burn your store right down to a crisp.” Thought to be a response to the killing of a 15 year-old Latasha Harlins by a Korean convenience store owner after an argument over a bottle of orange juice.
- #18 "Doing Dumb Shit" - Cube masterfully turns a song that starts out as an ode to childhood mischief to a sobering warning about the dangers of the criminal lifestyle.
- #20 "Us" - A call for personal responsibility or respectability politics in full splendor? You decide.
- #21 "No Vaseline" - This was the bonus that we’d been waiting for. Cube finally went in on his erstwhile N.W.A. comrades and did NOT disappoint. Battle rap at its finest!
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