KEY POINTS:
It could have been a scene straight out of one of his movies. "Yesterday I took the kids to San Diego wild animal park," says Ice Cube, on the phone from LA. "It was cool. We got a chance to see giraffes and lions and all that kind
of stuff up close."
Only a hint of the hardcore rapper's anti-authoritarian streak is revealed when he mentions he also took them to the museum.
"I don't trust school's version of history so I like to teach my kids a version of history that you know, is more on point to what they need to know."
It's not easy reconciling the different faces - and voices - of Ice Cube. On the phone he has the mellow, measured tones of a dad who says he's "firm but fair". Inside the album cover of his last release he's pictured with a gun cocked rudely at the camera and a phallic cigar protruding from his mouth, his face twisted with that trademark scowl.
Yet over the past six years, young people getting into hip-hop could be forgiven for not knowing about his hip-hop legacy. Since his breakout role in Boyz n the Hood in 1991, he has become a movie regular, as famous for his family-friendly fluff, (Are We There Yet?) as his dark gang films (Thicker Than Water) and crude comedies (Friday).
Next up is First Sunday, in which he plays a petty crim who robs a church to pay his grandmother who has poured all her money into it, a role that seems tailor-made to his contradictory image of the tough guy and the good Samaritan.
"Both of them to me are precious voices and both of 'em are like a canvas. Hip-hop, audio, hardcore rap music - it's nothing but the blues reinvented. And there's nothing bigger to me that an artist can do, than a movie.
"I mean, you can do the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower or whatever. But them things don't move. Once you've seen it once, you've seen what you need to see. But with a film, you can have a moving canvas that can do anything. I cherish doing movies."
After a six-year break to concentrate on films, he's finally back in his element. Cube plays the Telstra Clear Pacific Events Centre on August 22 in a concert that will stretch from his NWA days in 1987 through to the material from his next solo album, Raw Footage.
Many artists wouldn't dream of revisiting their earliest work - particularly stuff they did with now-absent band members - but the NWA material will be an integral part of the show. Before Cube released his acclaimed debut solo album Amerikkka's Most Wanted, NWA's landmark album, Straight Outta Compton helped to pave the way for gangsta rap and for many, was a wake-up call to the realities of life in South Central.
"I think it opened the eyes of a generation who are now in positions of power," he says. "Maybe when it's time to say yay or nay to funding an inner-city programme or this or that, being exposed to the truth as we rapped about it, will give people the incentive to do some good. People they know nothing about, y'know?"
That might seem hypocritical coming from a rapper whose aesthetic is so aggressive. In 1994 Chicago rapper Common took umbrage at Cube's rhymes on his single, I Used To Love H.E.R, claiming he degraded hip-hop.
This week Manukau City mayoral candidate Len Brown voiced his disapproval and called for Cube's concert to be banned, saying his music promoted a gangster way of life and wouldn't help the problems the city faced with youth gangs and violence.
It's fair to say Cube's hard-hitting messages made more of an impact in the 90s. Study the lyrics to his latest rhymes and you'll find he's not so much promoting the lifestyle as trying to explain it.
On a line from Laugh Now, Cry Later, he raps, "Call me an animal up in the system, but who's the animal that built this prison? Who's the animal that invented lower living, the projects? Thank God for Russell Simmons."
"People wanted it real hardcore on this record, real deep, you know, a record that mirrored one of my old albums," he says. "But I'm not sure if they ready for that. They don't want that full dose.
"By the time NWA came out Public Enemy had people's minds open for that kind of stuff."
"People's minds are closed in a lot of ways and it's just the underground."
Still, it does seems odd that, six years after courting the family film market, he's still carting around that bad-boy image.
"I just know that I got real young fans and I got real old fans because of those movies. But my records are more of what I'm all about. The movies are just acting ... I got a wide variety of fans, and there are people who would never listen to one of my records, there are people who will never look at none of my movies."
He makes no secret of how he feels about today's hip-hop climate, rapping on Growin' Up: "I used to be lyrical-political but now you want it sugar-coated like cereal".
There's nothing sugar-coated about his new tracks. Laugh Now, Cry Later is a tribute to his early hardcore sound. It's somewhat telling that it was released on his own independent label, but Cube says he's long since stopped caring about whether his music is topical; he'd rather it pleased his old fans.
"I wanted to do hip-hop with more substance in it, not just pop-rap."
Among his favourite tracks are Why We Thugs, his explanation of the thug mentality and its rise since the death of Tupac, and Growin' Up, the story of his career.
Has he grown up?
"Yeah, yeah I have. But what's cool is that I'm still doing the music I been doing since I was 14."
Even if the appetite for the kind of rap NWA helped to make famous has waned.
"I think [the] mass media saw the danger to their status quo and went with the kind of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, early NWA and said, 'this stuff right here can hurt what we're trying to build'. So it made a conscious effort to push ego, self-medicated rap and and then after that conscious, political rap.
"You've got to talk about the people who run movies, magazines, newspapers, radio - they made a conscious effort to say 'hey, that stuff ain't relevant. You know, Death Row, let's go that route ... '
"But you know it all has to be done in the perfect timing. The worst thing you wanna do is try to preach to somebody who don't wanna hear it. So you gotta do good hip-hop and don't even worry about all that. All that stuff don't matter."
Lowdown
Who: Ice Cube
Real name: O'Shea Jackson
Albums: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990), Death Certificate (1991), The Predator (1992), Lethal Injection (1993), War & Peace - Volume 1 (1998), War & Peace - Volume 2 (2000), Laugh Now, Cry Later (2006), Raw Footage (2007)
On tour: TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre, August 22
