Ice Cube Recalls Beef With Common

Ice Cube recently sat down with Talib Kweli for his podcast People’s Party. The Compton rapper opened about his old school feud with Common, which he’s previously claimed began when he thought Common’s song “I Used To Be H.E.R.” was a diss to West Coast rappers. The tension ended in coordination with  Minister Louis Farrakhan, who created a gathering for Cube, Common, and others at the Nation Of Islam headquarters in Chicago in 1997.

“Sometimes, you have a beef with somebody and you squash it but it’s not really squashed,” he explains. “It’s still that thing in the back of your head, saying, ‘Man, f**k that…’ It wasn’t that way with Common and myself. It was truly squashed.” 

Cube also details how he ended up putting Common in Barbershop 3. “We needed these different characters for Barbershop,” he said. “We knew we wasn’t going to get Michael Ealy back and we was looking for a guy who could be that and bring a different presence. When [Common’s] name came up, I was like, ‘Hell yeah.’”

He also explained why Common was perfect for the role. “He’s a Chicago dude, a good dude, he’s for the culture. He’s improved it over and over,” Cube says. “He not into beefing with nobody and we need to show the world that no matter what happened in the past that we could still work together and be brothers… It was just a misunderstanding.”

Looking back on the beef with Common, Cube says it was “a dark moment” in his career. “Common was a good dude, I don’t think he deserved it. I was just in my feelings,” he remembers.

Each rapper ended up releasing diss records – Common with “The Bitch in Yoo” and Westside Connection, the group Cube was in, with “Westside Slaughterhouse.”

Watch the full People’s Party below.