Ice Cube has built a career on fearless truth-telling, and his latest project, Man Up, continues that legacy.
Serving as the companion to last year’s chart-topping Man Down, the new album expands Cube’s uncompromising critique of politics, culture, and history. Together, the two projects form a sharp statement at a moment when hip-hop finds itself under renewed public scrutiny.
The lead single, “Before Hip Hop,” embodies the project’s urgency. Over thunderous production, Cube dismantles a familiar accusation—that rap music created urban violence. Instead of sidestepping the argument, he confronts it directly, wielding history as proof that crime and injustice long predate the culture.
“It’s easy and lazy to look at what’s going on in a lot of communities and blame hip hop for everything,” Cube declares. “But the reality is the violence, pain, and broken systems were already here. Before Hip Hop is calling out the revisionist, showing how crime and injustice existed long before hip hop music. We didn’t cause it — we just called it.”
The single doubles as both warning and manifesto. For decades, politicians and media critics have weaponized rap as a scapegoat, treating it as shorthand for dysfunction. Cube flips that script, reminding listeners that hip-hop has always served as testimony rather than the origin of society’s fractures.
With Man Up, Cube refuses nostalgia. Instead, he positions himself as a present-day critic, still using the mic as shield and sword. The album proves hip-hop remains his battlefield—and his sharpest weapon.
Man Up - Ice Cube
Official Tracklist
1. Man Power
2. Watchu Gonna Do About It
3. Freedumb
4. Guess What?
5. Forget Me If You Ain’t Wit Me
6. Before Hip Hop
7. Act My Age (featuring Scarface)
8. Ratchet Ass Mouth
9. Respect My Space
10. California Dreamin
11. That Salt And Pepper
12. Bring Everybody
13. It’s My Ego 3Mix (featuring Quake Matthews)
14. All Work And No Play
