‘Let Me Ride’: The song Dr Dre and Ice Cube used to squash their beef
Both prolific rappers in their own right, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, teamed up in the video for the 1993 hit ‘Let Me Ride‘. However, Ice Cube has a history of beefing with others, and he wasn’t always on good terms with Dre. They first collaborated as members of N.W.A., the prestigious if controversial rap group that produced hits like ‘Straight Outta Compton‘ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’.
Nevertheless, relations between the two collaborators became strained just a couple of years after the formation of NWA when Ice Cube decided to leave the group due to being unhappy with the royalties he received from the group.
NWA referenced Ice Cube’s departure in the song ‘100 Miles and Runnin‘ with the lyrics “We started with five, but yo one couldn’t make it. So now it’s four cuz the fifth couldn’t make it.” Feelings were clearly hurt, and the drama definitely wasn’t one-sided. In 1991, Ice Cube released the album Death Certificate, which featured the diss track ‘No Vaseline’.
On the controversial track, Ice Cube revealed how he really felt, referencing Dr Dre and his former group members several times in scathing lyrics like “You lookin’ like straight bozos, I saw it comin’ that’s why I went solo, kept on stompin’.”
Still, two years later, things took a positive turn with the release of the aforementioned ‘Let Me Ride’. In the video for the song, which featured Snoop Dogg and was directed by Dr Dre himself, Ice Cube made an appearance. During his cameo in the video, the rapper referenced his own track ‘It Was a Good Day‘, thoroughly squashing all rumours that he and Dre were still feuding.
Though the song itself doesn’t feature any references to Ice Cube or the supposed feud, Ice Cube’s appearance was enough to let the public know that the beef he and Dr. Dre had been having for several years was settled.
In a 2016 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Ice Cube went into more detail about the reunion between him and his former group mate. “He (Dr. Dre) had a house in West Lake, he was producing a record called ‘Natural Born Killaz‘, and he just wanted me on it,” the rapper told Howard Stern, calling the reunion “a little awkward.”
He went on to explain, ‘That was during the Death Row (Records) years and he had called me, and I hadn’t heard from him in forever so I was excited.” When Ice Cube got to the house, he found it unexpectedly packed and had some difficulty even finding Dr. Dre. However, when he did find him, the two hugged it out, with Ice Cube sharing, “it’s like, we never even talked about the past. We just went forward.”
As referenced by Ice Cube, the two rappers indeed worked together on ‘Natural Born Killaz‘, which was created for the soundtrack of the 1994 film Murder Was the Case. Several variations of the track were released throughout the mid-1990s, and an alternative music video featuring Dr. Dre and Ice Cube was later released in 2000.
It seems that Dr. Dre reaching out to Ice Cube to make an appearance in the video for ‘Let Me Ride‘ was the key for the two to put their past drama behind them and begin afresh as collaborators and friends.