The Ice Cube song that appears in Michael Jackson’s iconic ‘Bad’ video
Before joining NWA and helping to change the nature of hip-hop forever, Ice Cube used to rap in another group. Known first as Stereo Crew and later as CIA, the band never achieved much in the way of success—except for one song that forged a strange connection to Michael Jackson.
Ice Cube’s bandmates in Stereo Crew were K-Dee and Sir Jinx, who was the cousin of Dr Dre. In fact, the rap trio initially got their start by performing at parties that Dre used to throw.
The young rap group, still teenagers at the time, released a single on Epic Records in 1986 that bore the unfortunate title of ‘She’s A Skag.’ The song is, indeed, littered with the misogyny that such a title promises, and it did not prove to be a hit.
Even though the track hardly set the world alight upon its release, it did, weirdly, go on to achieve a sort of pop cultural immortality. That’s because it ended up featuring in the music video to Michael Jackson’s classic song ‘Bad.’
The video was an elaborate affair, directed by none other than Martin Scorsese and playing out as an 18-minute short film. It is arguably among the most iconic music videos of all time, and, completely unexpectedly, Ice Cube and his old bandmates have a part to play in it.
The song appears about six minutes into the epic promo, before a scene in which Jackson, playing the character of Darryl, has an interaction with someone played by Welsey Snipes. The track plays in the background.
During a conversation with DubCNN in 2018, Sir Jinx explained that the song was selected for the video by people at Epic Records. Stereo Crew had recently signed up with the label, which was responsible for the Bad album release in 1987.
“Epic Records didn’t have an urban department,” Jinx explained, and they didn’t want to go fishing for score music. So they just picked that record.”
It seems that the young Stereo Crew members weren’t even aware their song had been selected. “It was crazy,” Jinx said, “because back in the day Michael Jackson used to have those crazy premieres when his videos were going to drop. Everybody was sitting in front of their TVs and had their VCRs waiting. When I was watching the video, I thought somebody had drove past playing it in their car. It didn’t really hit me until I saw the video again, and then it was like, ‘Oh, our song is in the video!’”
Despite becoming a small part of pop music history, Epic Records duly dropped Stereo Crew following the commercial failure of ‘She’s A Skag.’ They later signed with Kru Cut Records and changed their name to CIA, but not much came of them. It was all, ultimately, leading to the formation of NWA.