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As Ice Cube rolled into Kelowna to perform at Center of Gravity 2016, the same fight that he has been a part of since the '80s had revved-up yet again.
It’s a tale that has spanned decades, and rifts between police officers and black men in the United States don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
Thirty years ago when Ice Cube and N.W.A. took off running in the music industry, they might have been some of the most well-known rap artists at the time but they still had to deal with the ongoing carding, pat-downs and arrests.
Last week, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed at the hands of cops, on video. Their deaths were followed by a retaliation shooting at a Black Lives Matter protest that killed five officers in Dallas on Thursday.
Family, how are we going to stop #TheWarOnUs ? pic.twitter.com/FcESE7XUI3
— Ice Cube (@icecube) July 7, 2016
In Kelowna, Ice Cube took the stage on Friday to perform his hits spanning the decades, from the early days of N.W.A. with the famed 1988 song, Straight Outta Compton, to his newer hits.
Attendees were treated to most of his music, except one song: F*** Tha Police.
When he first said he wouldn’t be singing it, the crowd booed.
He later explained that he chose to take it out of his set due to the Dallas shooting. The crowd erupted in cheers as Ice Cube shouted, "we like the good ones.”
The history behind the song is extensive and is just one example of Ice Cube speaking out on the issue.
In the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton, which depicts the lives of him and other N.W.A. members, you can see the history between the group and the police goes way back.
In one of the first scenes, Cube is shown with a group of other young black men getting frisked by the cops while walking home with school books in hand by cops who think they're in a gang.
“How you figure we in a gang? ‘Cause we black?” he said.
In the movie, another interaction with a cop where the group is yelled at to get down or be shot leads Cube to writing F*** Tha Police. The group was later arrested for performing that song in Detroit, after police had instructed them not to.
Both the bio-pic and Cube's social media show how much this civil right's issue has shaped the musician's life.
Cube has tweeted plenty about the shootings, calling on the government to do more–to change the system.
#TheWarOnUs pic.twitter.com/GMRHQYK235
— Ice Cube (@icecube) July 8, 2016
On Sunday, 500 demonstrators gathered in Baton Rouge, La., to protest Sterling’s death and were met by 100 officers in riot gear. It just begs the question, when will it end.
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