© Ming Han Photography, circa 2013
l to r: Keith Shocklee, Ice Cube, Queen Lisa Lee, Dot-A-Rock (RIP), Busy Bee, Pebblee Poo, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Kool DJ Red Alert, Ice-T
Big ups to Brian Coleman for this write-up, which I first read in Wax Poetics issue #41. full interview
“They had us come out to Long Island first, we stayed in a hotel out there,” Cube says. “We just sat there for four or five days before we even went to 510 South Franklin, because Public Enemy was doing shows. At 510, they basically had a warehouse full of records. They eventually showed us around and then said, ‘Go find your album.’ They told us to go find what records we wanted to use, and we’d go from there.”
Hank says, “When Cube arrived, he told me that he had come with the one-way ticket [laughs]! I had to applaud him for that. When he got in, I let him get up in 510 South Franklin and go through all my records. He stayed there for days. I wanted to feel where he was coming from, musically. He was into a lot of funk, stuff from the Steve Arrington era. Slave, Con Funk Shun. Mostly, though, he liked a lot of the underground funk, like Betty Davis. He liked a lot of slow stuff. I understood where he was at after that. Cube slept on the floor of 510 going through all those records. He had a hotel, but he was working around the clock.”
