Credit: Paramount

There are many strings to Ice Cube’s bow. After finding fame as a hard-talkin’ gangsta with NWA, Cube later moved into the movie business, where his career took some turns that few could have expected when he became known for his violent rapping. As lots of his subsequent work demonstrates, Cube has a softer side.

Cube’s first movie arguably remains his best, and it adhered to the street persona that he projected as a rapper. His Boyz N The Hood character, Doughboy, was a tough sort, although Cube played him with a depth and sensitivity that went deeper than the almost cartoonishly gangsta persona of his rap songs.

Boyz N The Hood was a surprise hit after it came out, even picking up a couple of Oscar nominations. While Cube wasn’t personally nominated, he had proven himself as an actor and a successful career duly followed.

One might have expected Cube to continue taking on the roles of tough guys, and, certainly, there have been a few of them through the years. In Three Kings, for example, he played a soldier in the Gulf War. This one saw him starring opposite George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, and it was a big success.

But Ice Cube has arguably become known best for his comedies. His stoner comedy Friday franchise is one of his best known works, while he’s also done lots of family movies, too. His Are We There Yet? franchise is perhaps the most popular in that vein.

The point is that Cube has exhibited lots of different parts of himself throughout his music and acting career, and he can’t easily be pigeonholed. But he hasn’t done everything. Something he hasn’t done terribly much of is romantic movies.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not a fan of the genre. During a conversation with Relevant magazine in 2010, Cube listed some of his favourite Black romantic movies. Claudine, Love & Basketball and Boomerang were the ones he reached for.

Claudine, released in 1974, is credited with depicting another side of Black life on film, during a period in which Blaxploitation was all the rage for moviegoers. Love & Basketball came out in 2000 and followed a young man and woman who, in the midst of both pursuing basketball careers, fall in love. Boomerang is an Eddie Murphy film from 1992, which saw him play a womaniser who rethinks his ways when a woman treats him as badly as he had treated other women in the past.

“I’d say Claudine because it shows a real struggle for love,” Ice Cube said of his picks. “I liked Love & Basketball, felt it was so relatable and you really wanted those two to get together and it was nice. I’m even a fan of Boomerang, about a player who gets played and has to find the one who’s right to him.”