Ghetto Vet
Ice Cube
By Natalie Silver
It’s hard to write about Ice Cube without sounding like his disciple.
Anyone who can rhyme “Arsenio” with “bicentennial,” or who can write an entire song about why he won’t have sex with white women and justify it with critically analytical lines such as “That’s kinda like Barbie fucking Bob Marley,” is truly a master of their art. And the entire English language.
And on top of that, this same artist had the intuition to use music as a revolutionary form of civil disobedience, taking N.W.A. next-level with “Fuck Tha Police” (and beyond), and, in doing so, completely birth the political and social animal that became Gangsta Rap.
With a stupid high rhyme factor and a sensational proclivity for pop culture references, multisyllabic rhymes and raw testimonies, Ice Cube is a whore for social commentary—which he delivers with rage and humor in the most savage possible way.
That’s why we know him; that’s why it’s genius.
Ghetto Vet is the dark star of Cube’s vast repertoire, snuggled deep within the track sequencing of his 1998 album War & Peace Vol. 1 (The War Disc).
It’s brilliant piece of poetry that makes a powerful, implied connection between two very unlikely identity groups—the (black) victim of hood violence and the (white) Vietnam vet.
Cube equates the two experiences, drawing an implicit parallel between the roughness, emotional turmoil, profiling and discrimination faced by Black men living in the hood to the societal rejection of the white male war veteran. These two groups of people look unlike each other, were born armed with radically different privileges, and are generally understood as ideologically divided, yet “Ghetto Vet” conveys that people are truly not so different when they are reduced to the lowest common denominator and become discarded members of society.
Cube has a way of illustrating the common humanity within our hardships, luring in alien listeners (like me, a 22-year-old white girl from California) through his maniacal beats and compelling melodies, and keeping them (me) hooked through the command of his lyrics.
I believe my favorite line of the piece encapsulates its entire essence—a brutal reality draped in raw imagery and outrageous hilarity.
“To all the hood rat hoes I'm fine/
They mad 'cause my tongue get tired.”
The keyboard backing melody is shrill and brilliant; a would-be pure and hollow sound standing alone, but something else entirely when coated with Cube’s heavy vocals. The two elements of the song come together in a strange and unlikely harmony. They synergize as a furious testimony of the life of the ghetto vet.
The effect: extreme masochism edging on hysteria. And I guess it goes without saying that I like it.
April 3, 2019