“Straight outta Compton, crazy motherf*cker named Ice Cube.” So begins one of the world’s most influential rap albums, by the dope-dealing, gangb*nging, police-baiting nigg*z With Attitude. To O’Shea Jackson Jr, that “crazy motherf*cker” is Dad. Over the years, Jackson has been able to watch him, soak up his legacy, and embrace the best parts of it. Now he’s playing him in the story of Cube’s life, Straight Outta Compton: the movie.
Jackson was born in 1991, the year his dad hit Hollywood with John Singleton’s acclaimed drama Boyz N The Hood. Now, down the line from San Francisco, he is fizzing with pride over the biopic’s release. Indeed, it’s an exhilarating film. Focusing on the trials and tribulations of Cube and his fellow NWA cohorts including Dr Dre and Eazy-E, it hurls you into the eye of their storm as they rise up from the streets, get shaken down by the police and the FBI, then battle each other as money rips them apart.
It loses a little traction as story strands splinter, but still hangs together and is surprisingly emotional, largely thanks to some excellent performances by those playing the group’s members – many of whom are virtual unknowns. Jackson himself hadn’t acted before, but this character was, well, in his genes. He likes to say he’s been researching it for 20 years. “He’s been taking me on tour since I was one,” he says of his dad. In 2000, that took in the notorious Up In Smoke tour, a riotous roadshow starring a litany of hip-hop greats: Cube, Dre, Snoop and the up-and-coming Eminem, among others. It was a controversial cornucopia of incendiary rap music and projected raunchy videos, clouded in a fug of weed.
How old was Jackson at the time, nine? “Yeah!” he laughs. “We would be on a platform where they worked the lights, in the middle of the arena, watching the shows, and randomly my older brother Darrel and our road manager would stand in front of me! I was like: ‘What the hell are y’all doing?!’ When I was older I realised they were blocking my eyes because there were too many topless women [on the screens]. I was well-watched on that tour.” When he hit his teens, Darrel introduced Jackson to NWA proper, and their dad explained where he and his friends came from: the drug-dealing, the gunfights, the relentless police harassment.
The incongruity surely hit home, which for Cube’s children was the markedly more comfortable climes of LA’s San Fernando Valley. The film’s release further illustrates that contrast: at last week’s premiere, the surviving members of NWA were catered for by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck but also flanked by security; indeed, US police fearing gang violence are increasing patrols around cinemas showing the film.
“People might have their idea of what this movie’s gonna represent,” says Jackson. How did Cube’s history sit with him when he discovered it? “The trials my father went through were things most young black males have to go through,” he says. “There was nothing he shielded from me, because it doesn’t matter how you grow up, those who oppress will oppress. It’s all completely relatable, everyone feels NWA. We still have family who live in the city. It’s a constant thing. The thing my father’s rapping about isn’t just happening in Compton, it’s global.”
Aside from the politics, his father’s musical skills also influenced Jackson, who started rapping in his late teens. His dad was all for it, so long as it was good. Soon enough, they were performing onstage together. I found a clip of them doing NWA’s Dopeman in El Paso last month, and was hit by the absurdity of father and son rapping in unison: “I don’t give a sh*t if your girl kneel down and suck my dick.” I haven’t done that with my dad. “Dude,” laughs Jackson. “That part isn’t awkward. If you listen to the lyrics of It Was A Good Day: ‘I got a beep from Kim, and she can f*ck all night.’ Kim is my mom.” He cracks up. “That’s way more awkward than us both getting down to Dopeman!” Have you done that one with him? “Ha ha! No, we haven’t done Good Day. My older brother has done it with him, though.” The pair changed “Kim” to “her”, to make it marginally less weird.
His father’s interest in cinema was handed down too, and Jackson decided to pursue screenwriting, studying it at university. Acting wasn’t on the radar until Cube, who produced Straight Outta Compton and thought his lookalike son had the presence to pull off the role, popped the question: why don’t you play me? Jackson thought; if it was gonna be anybody, it should be him. Cube hired top-notch acting coaches to train him over a two-year period, in which Jackson fully devoted himself to his new craft, finally resulting in a successful screen test for Universal. According to director F Gary Gray, he beat hundreds of better-known actors to the role; Cube has said that he and Gray put Jackson through the wringer. “It was so much hard work,” says Jackson, “but it was the time of my life.”
He studied his dad keenly, making sure he could walk the walk and talk the talk, especially the 80s ’hood lingo. Cube’s trademark snarl and famously intimidating eyebrows were already taken care of; a genetic gift. “Yeah, that’s how I get recognised in the street,” he laughs. What about those late-80s Jheri curls? How was it seeing himself in that wig? “Actually, it was cool; that’s when I knew I was in character, that’s Superman’s cape. But I kinda knew what I was gonna look like, because when I was 16 I couldn’t come up with a Halloween costume so I had my mom give me a Jheri-curl wig and I went as my father! Easiest Halloween costume: Ice Cube! As a kid I would make my bread and butter off that.”
Cube has likened his own experience on set – seeing his son as him, doing as he did – to Back To The Future, joking that he might start disappearing from photos. The blurring of life and art does get bizarre at points. “I got a baby on the way,” shouts Jackson as Cube during one angry altercation. That baby was himself, and in a later scene, baby O’Shea Jackson Jr actually appears. “That’s freaky,” he says now. “I was scared cameras might blow up.”
Jackson is embracing acting, but doesn’t simply want to take the roles his father is getting too old to play. He’s also determined to dispel accusations of nepotism. “That kills me, that stuff,” he says. “It hurts. How could you not be happy for me? The people out there who believe it was nepotism, they don’t know the process. There was gonna be no one as passionate as I was. People should be applauding someone who’s able to take this family legacy and build on it, to further work on this empire my father built from the ground up. It’s all about my father. Everything I did was just to make him proud.”
Straight Outta Compton is out in cinemas nationwide from Friday
