Ice Cube shares feature list and cover art for new album ‘Man Down’
Ice Cube has an upcoming album and he has shared some dates about the project. Not only has the Crenshaw emcee confirmed the release date he has also unveiled the cover art for what will be his eleventh studio album Man Down.
Taking to Instagram, the LA legend wrote: “The album my fans have been waiting on. MAN DOWN drops on 11/22, pre-save the album now.” The artwork is quite bold and shows a young boy in sweatpants and a hoodie walking past a murder victim, dead on the floor.
The pre-sale for Man Down features 19 songs with some big guest appearances. For this body of work, Ice Cube has collaborated with Killer Mike as well as Busta Rhymes who appears on the song ‘Ego Maniacs’. Furthermore, the NWA veteran has assembled a team of West Coast legends to appear, including the likes of Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Kurupt, B-Real, E-40 and Too $hort.
Ice Cube has even endorsed the talented Death Row signee October London to provide some soulful vocals to some tracks. To promote his first album in six years, Ice Cube made an appearance on the Bootleg Kev podcast, where he assured fans they would get a real flavour of the old-school West Coast, stating, “Around the [2006] Laugh Now, Cry Later record, right before that record I was like, ‘When I pick up an Anita Baker record, I want it to sound like Anita Baker.’”
As such, he felt that his fans wanted his projects to sound authentically like Ice Cube, explaining, “I felt like Ice Cube fans are the same way. When they pick it up, they want it to be authentic, quintessential Ice Cube. That’s what I’ve been worrying about delivering… That’s what I been focused on — doing records that are totally me.”
During his discussion with Bootleg Kev, the ‘You Can Do It’ rhymer also spoke about the proudest moment of his career and unveiled that, surprisingly, it has nothing to do with music, detailing, “I would say Friday because I was kinda out of my element as far as writing and producing. Doing a comedy, everybody was surprised at the time because there was nothing comedic in my music.”
He continued, “We had funny little parts in our music, but everything was hardcore, so everybody thought I was tripping a little bit, like, ‘Damn, Ice Cube’s coming with a comedy?’” He added, “I learned from ‘It Was a Good Day.’ To me, it was the song version of Friday. It’s me coming out the box, because everything was hard, and then here I go [and] flip it.”