Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Chapter 15

The Real Enemy: Cultural Riot of Ice Cube’s Death Certificate
by: Steve Jamison and Kyle Russ

This chapter was about the album that Ice Cube wrote in response to the conditions of African neighborhoods in Southern California in the early 1990’s. Two incidents occurred at this point in time that caused a lot of hardship and tension. Rodney King was beaten by several white cops after speeding drunk and a young African-American girl that was murdered in a liquor store for allegedly stealing an OJ. This caused a lot of strife between the African-American neighborhoods and the Korean-American shop owners. Many of the African-American patrons felt as though the shop owners thought they were consistently stealing, and many of the Korean-Americans felt as though their lives were in danger because of the number of robberies at the time.

Ice Cube’s album was in response to these conditions. He took a strong stand that was about the unity of African-American men, rising up, but not necessarily equal with the white population. He used harsh, aggressive lyrics “of the streets” that referenced white people, Jews, and Korean-Americans as “the devil.” Several of the songs referenced violent acts toward these groups of people. He also referenced women as “bitches” and “hoes,” although he later claimed that he did not think all women were this way. The album was banned in some stores and protested by several organizations.

KAGRO (Korean American Grocery Organization) looked to protect its people in these neighborhoods, and forced Cube to apologize and discourage violence against store owners and bring the communities closer together. KAGRO’s leverage was that Cube was the number one endorser of St. Idle, a malt liquor that was sold in all of the liquor stores in these neighborhoods. KAGRO adopted a ten point code of behavior that African American activists hailed as a breakthrough.