ICE CUBE

If you think about stuff that happened when you were young, it stays with you forever.

Can't step from one movie set to the next. Only Samuel L. Jackson can do that. All us mere mortals can't do that!

Ice Cube is the piece of me that I give away to the public.

'Boyz-n-the-Hood' was actually supposed to be written for Eazy's group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.

But with rap music - not just N.W.A. - but rap music in general, seeing these artists wearing these team logos all the time started bringing a synergy and energy about having to rep your city, your team, everywhere and all the time.

Don't worry about being a star, worry about doing good work, and all that will come to you.

I do what I do. You like it, great. You don't, go listen to somebody else. I'm stickin' with the people who stuck with me.

I've got a basketball signed by all the greats from Julius Irving to Oscar Robinson. It was at an All Star game I got them all to sign it. So that ain't going nowhere. I'm going to die with that in my casket.

Anything that got to do with a pig, I ain't eatin'.

There's never really been a real hood Christmas movie.

I'm just an entertainer, man. I don't like to pigeonhole myself to anything. I love to do it all.

I'm a B-boy at heart. I still like rhyming. It's just the radio game is like Chinese arithmetic. It's hard to know what nuts to crack. But I still love music, been dropping music. Never stopped, really.

Some people have a taboo about doing advertising in the States. You know, where they kind of make their bread and butter. But to me, that's crazy.

You like a woman, she's got kids, it's a package. You can't just go in one-sided.

I been all around the world and I haven't found a city that I'd rather be from or rather come back to than Los Angeles.

Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out. They don't want to and they don't have the means to sustain it. That's where my heart is and that's what I think about all the time.

Music is where I have the most creative freedom, but I love producing. To me, that's kind of where all the action is. You get a chance to have your hands in every aspect of a film. From picking a director, sometimes picking a writer, to the actors, the wardrobe, set design, editing, music, and marketing.

Sometimes when you're relegated to your neighborhood, you forget that there's more important things than your neighborhood going on out in the world.

Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles.

For me rappers and dancers are poets and artists and often times the most interesting performances are given by them.

The thing is with hip-hop, it has its waves and the waves crash against the beach and the new waves come in. So to stay relevant you have to roll with that.

I have a really beautiful life right now, so there is no reason to be hostile. I'm a husband, a father and a man who tries to do the right thing in life and in my work.

I don't get nothing but love. In every ghetto all over the world. Nothing but love. They respect that I came outta there and I'm doing it the right way. You can't do nothing but respect that.

South Central is just who I am.

I really appreciate family. I really can't imagine life without them!