Six emerging rappers from marginalised and disadvantaged communities around Sydney were given the surprise of their lives and careers when rap legend, Ice Cube and his son, star of the new N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton O'Shea Jackson Jr, visited the group unannounced as part of a Channel [V] video stunt this week.
The unassuming young rappers were attending a music workshop at Sydney’s Studio 301, run by the organisation for emerging artists Heaps Decent, with award-winning Aussie rapper Briggs, when the famed hip-hop star ‘dropped in’.
Pleasantly shocked by Cube’s visit, the group smiled ear-to-ear once they caught on.
Cube asked the youths about their work and offered words of encouragement to keep battling to get their music out in the community.
“We do what we can to get our voices out there,” one of the artists told Ice Cube.
In Australia to promote Straight Outta Compton, Cube said he paid the youths a visit because he heard about the work that the arts organisation, Heaps Decent, is doing with young people and emerging artists from marginalised and disadvantaged communities.
The organisation aims to provide youths with a means by which they can tell their story their own way.
“We do what we can to get our voices out there."
The rapper offered the group words of inspiration, saying that N.W.A’s start in the music business was just like theirs.
“We were just locals in LA. We didn’t even think our music was going to go nowhere,” Ice Cube told the rappers in the video.
“We thought nobody even cared about it we just did what we felt and it blew up.
“Do what you feel if it comes strictly from your heart.”
“Just keep doing what you are doing.”
Ice Cube then invited the artists to accompany him to the premiere of his new film at Fox Studios Sydney later that day.
“Do what you feel if it comes strictly from your heart.”
Straight Outta Compton, out in cinemas across Australia, tells the story of gangsta rap group N.W.A and their run-ins with authorities as they fought a social battle in the late 80s and early 90s.
The movie stars O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E.
