Aaron Grech May 20th, 2020 - 5:33 PM
Ice Cube held a 30th anniversary celebration of his seminal debut album AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted last Saturday on Instagram live, where he commentated on the record alongside its play through. During the stream, he claimed that Fred Rogers, the host of the influential children’s television program Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, had sued the hip hop artist over a sample used in “A Gangsta’s Fairytale.”
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“A Gangsta’s Fairytale” reportedly contained a sample of the show’s theme during it’s introduction, which Ice Cube said angered the television host. The rapper claimed that Rogers was going to receive five cents from each record sold until that sample was removed from the song.
He also provides a little back story regarding its recording. AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted came after Ice Cube’s tenuous split from N.W.A., the pioneering gangsta rap outfit which also launched the careers of hip hop legends Eazy-E and Dr. Dre. Ice Cube claims to have written this song for Eazy-E originally, but he performed it himself due to the tensions between both artists at the time.
“I actually wrote this for Eazy-E. But y’all know what it is, we weren’t getting down at the time so I had to take it myself,” Cube explained during the stream. “It’s a trip because off this song, Mr. Rogers sued us. He was mad because we had the Mister Rogers theme at the beginning of this shit. ‘It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood’ and all that. The n***a sued us and was getting like five cents a record until we took that part off.”
While Ice Cube has also supported an acting career since the 1990s, he has been releasing music as recently as 2018 with his song “Arrest The President.” Check out our review of the 25th anniversary of Death Certificate here.
Check out the full stream below:
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Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado
