There's a lot of potential that goes unused in places like South Central L.A., a lot of brilliant, smart people who just don't have that chance to show it.
It's not like I'm the first man ever to do this, y'know? You gotta go back to Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. Those are people who've done music well and movies well, and y'know, Frank Sinatra and Elvis and all these dudes have made the transition. I don't know about Elvis, 'bout doin' 'em good, y'know? It's nothin' new.
Doing it your own way, not having to go exactly by the book to be successful.
It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us, 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'
My son Darrel could recite 'Straight Outta Compton' at two years old. He loved it! You can expose your kids to anything as long as you sit there and explain it to them.
You don't wanna mess up what you've done. It's like Jordan coming back: You're scared to mess up the legacy.
I have a really beautiful life right now, so there is no reason to be hostile. I'm a husband, a father and a man who tries to do the right thing in life and in my work.
My grandmother worked at one of those Bel-Air mansions, and we would go - not too often, but every now and then - to pick her up. Hollywood was probably 12 miles from my house, but it might as well have been a million miles away. The only time I saw that world was on TV. Until I started making records.
The moral is that a career can be gone in an instant. And all you have in this world are the people you love.
There's a lot of talent in South Central L.A., in Compton and Long Beach and Watts, and the city north of Pico pretty much sits back and waits for that talent to emerge and then steps in.
Rap is just somebody getting something off his chest. That's all it is.
I've got a basketball signed by all the greats from Julius Irving to Oscar Robinson. It was at an All Star game I got them all to sign it. So that ain't going nowhere. I'm going to die with that in my casket.
I think, to me, reality is better than being fake.
Gangsta to us didn't have anything to do with Al Capone and stuff like that. It's just about living your life the way you want to live it. And you're not going to let nothing stop you.
Music is where I have the most creative freedom, but I love producing. To me, that's kind of where all the action is. You get a chance to have your hands in every aspect of a film. From picking a director, sometimes picking a writer, to the actors, the wardrobe, set design, editing, music, and marketing.
I go light on breakfast. Sometimes it's a yogurt, but a lot of times it's leftovers from one of my wife's dinners.
If you think about stuff that happened when you were young, it stays with you forever.
I'm a B-boy at heart. I still like rhyming. It's just the radio game is like Chinese arithmetic. It's hard to know what nuts to crack. But I still love music, been dropping music. Never stopped, really.
I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.
I do what I do. You like it, great. You don't, go listen to somebody else. I'm stickin' with the people who stuck with me.
When people see the Cubevision logo, they should know it's something good, something worth checking out.
Can't step from one movie set to the next. Only Samuel L. Jackson can do that. All us mere mortals can't do that!
Rap is always evolving. It's easy for the old school to hate the new school, but it's a music that got a little stifled I think, by the Internet a little bit.
I used to game a lot, you know, back in the day. My gaming time done got so short that my skills ain't where they need to be to be online, you know what I'm saying? I just got that Xbox One. I gotta get my skills back, up the par to call myself a gamer.
Don't worry about being a star, worry about doing good work, and all that will come to you.
Obama reminds me of the black kid at a white school that don't nobody want to play with.
Sports without music is just a game. Music makes it entertaining.
Truth is the ultimate power. When the truth comes around, all the lies have to run and hide.
The silver and black may have another home, but the Raiders will always belong to the people of Los Angeles.
I used to love to draw. I didn't want to go to art class because I felt that would be too corny when I was young, but architectural drafting was the cool thing to do because there was more precision. It taught me a lot about building and structures and doorways and frames and windowsills.
I been all around the world and I haven't found a city that I'd rather be from or rather come back to than Los Angeles.
Anything that got to do with a pig, I ain't eatin'.
Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles.
The best thing I've done with my money is buy a house for my family. You wake up to a house you love and you feel like somebody.
You like a woman, she's got kids, it's a package. You can't just go in one-sided.
Young people are dying for no reason all over the world that don't know why. It's ugly, everywhere.
I'm not actually from Compton - I'm from South Central Los Angeles, and my father still lives in the same house I grew up in, so I'm there all the time.
Don't get a movie confused with real life. I'm a well-rounded human being like everyone else.
South Central is just who I am.
I think I'm unique to the game 'cause of my versatility.
I'm just an entertainer, man. I don't like to pigeonhole myself to anything. I love to do it all.
Music has done a lot to enhance the emotions of sports. It's played in arenas. Whenever there is footage cut together they're always using music. And it goes together, you know.
Ice Cube is the piece of me that I give away to the public.
I'm not the type of actor who is trying to do a whole bunch of different stuff, you know what I mean?
I've done movies for certain reasons; I did 'Anaconda' because the black man lives. Simple. The black man isn't dead in the first three pages, like Jurassic Park. It's like, 'The black man kills the snake with a Latino girl? Damn! I got to do this.'
I was ready to get out of the box and play something a little different than what everybody has seen.
I was a very interested arts student, I was always into that part of school and when I got into high school I went into architectural drafting. It gave me an understanding of how to build things and it's really helped me put things in perspective. With my music and my movies, to me it's all art.
I've been caught in parachute pants. And on my high school yearbook, they used the wrong picture. They were supposed to use the picture of me with a nice suit on. They used me with my collar flipped up, in a fuchsia and white striped shirt. I blame Prince and Michael Jackson in the Eighties for that.
I never was in the Nation of Islam... I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, 'cause it's just me and God. You know, going to the mosque, the ritual and the tradition, it's just not in me to do. So I don't do it.
