The odds seemed stacked against this disc, the eighth solo album of a career spanning two decades by someone increasingly better known as a film maker and arguably creator of the hood chuckles genre - a rapper who had seemingly had his day; but not quite, at least not on close inspection. The last three albums had been less than amazing, but none were without their high points and whatever their problems may have been, it was never Cube's delivery. Surprisingly, Raw Footage is either his greatest single work, or just the one which made the most sense to me.
Admittedly, I picked this up on what was probably the equivalent of the first day of the rest of my life, new job in a different city, and a future which would either be disastrous or interesting but would at least be an alternative to rotting away in south-east London; and Raw Footage cemented itself immediately into my head, seemingly capturing the moment - which probably doesn't make any sense given that amongst all which Cube had on his mind when recording this album, moving back to his mum's house in Coventry and getting an agency job at Parcel Force doesn't seem to have figured highly. I guess it felt like a soundtrack for a future which once again held possibilities.
Ice Cube has forever moved with the times, musically speaking. It hasn't always quite worked, as on the War and Peace discs which have a bit of an also ran quality in relation to whatever else was going on at the end of the nineties. Raw Footage on the other hand sounded like it was about six months ahead of the curve with a sparse, spacious, yet luxuriant production of deep, deep bass and digital crunch, phone pings, detuned voice, yet more waveforms copied and pasted from place to place on a screen, and yet with Marvin Gaye levels of feeling. It's an album by an old guy, one happy to be older, wiser, and still very much disinclined to put up with any of your shit. Ice Cube's strength, aside from the obvious lyrical gymnastics, has forever been maintaining a fine balance between blasting your head off with the raw stuff whilst delivering one painful truth after another - black consciousness backpack with no qualms about punching you in the face, if you like; or regardless of whether you like it or not.
I Got My Locs On, Cold Places and Jack in the Box are as powerful, terrifying, chilling, and joyous as any of the man's greats, and this is one of those rare albums which is good to the last drop, an album which makes you want to rob a bank.
I didn't, by the way.
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