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Ice Cube has addressed the claim that he was aware of the “secret meeting that changed rap,” and the N.W.A legend isn’t pulling any punches.
The idea of a “Secret Meeting That Changed Rap” stems from a blog post first popularized about a decade ago, in which an anonymous source claimed that a group of 25 to 30 “decision makers” in the music business conspired together in 1991 to create a prison pipeline of sorts through rap music.
According to this conspiracy theory, the executives would hire a group of Black men and women to create music that encouraged criminal behavior, thus supplying the privately owned prisons (who were also alleged investors in the music industry) with much-needed free labor.
The letter has been promoted by some rappers, and a fan brought it up to Cube on Monday (January 29). According to the writer, he “believed” that Ice Cube and the rest of N.W.A were either directly involved with the meeting or were used as the template for record labels to create a series of clone rap groups, thus feeding the prison pipeline.
The “No Vaseline” rapper, though, wasn’t impressed. “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and they all stink! What evidence do you have to make a statement like that?” he replied.
Check out the tweet below.
Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and they all stink! What evidence do you have to make a statement like that? https://t.co/uS9H7wEC0g
— Ice Cube (@icecube) January 30, 2024
While Ice Cube may not be a fan of conspiracy theories such as the “Secret Meeting That Changed Rap,” he hasn’t been a fan of record labels, either.
Over the summer, the rapper was a guest on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast where he alleged there is a financial connection between the rap music industry and private prisons.
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“Who benefits and profits off our bickering and division?” responded Ice Cube, when asked about the rise of petty societal debates that create division — such as faulting one another for not using updated racial terms. “Follow the money.”
“I don’t know their names Bill, but if you follow the money, you go high enough, you start to see,” Cube added. He then used the record industry as a “broad example of how people at the top can manipulate what’s going on with the people who are bickering and fighting.”
He suggested that the “same people who own the [record labels] own the prisons,” while noting that “it seems kind of suspicious if you want to say that word, that the records that come out are geared to push people towards that prison industry.”
Reputable scholars have concluded that the “music industry to prison pipeline” is an urban legend, albeit one that touches on complicated issues.
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