In a recent interview, Ice Cube offers his opinion of the portrayal of African Americans in today’s popular reality shows. He has some very strong opinions. Read what he had to say after the jump.
Ice Cube isn’t a big fan of a lot of Black reality TV, but the veteran rapper turned actor and television/movie producer doesn’t let it bother him too much. Asked by media personality/blogger Gyant at an event in Atlanta last night [June 28] about the way black people are portrayed on reality television, Cube was matter-of-fact about the realities of reality programming.
“Forget the word ‘reality…’ The shows are scripted, the situations are put together,” he said. “They’re looking for the conflict, they wanna edit to the conflict. That is the show. Without the conflict, nobody’s watching. It’s a shame, but that’s kind of the nature of the beast.”
Though this approach doesn’t always lead to the best portrayal of African Americans, Cube said he doesn’t think black people should be too concerned about the machinations of a few TV producers.
“We really shouldn’t worry about one, two, three shows showing us one way,” he said. “We’ve shown the world that we’re well rounded, that we’re everything. So we shouldn’t be worried about that. Let’s just keep pushing the positive and let the negative people push the negative.”
The former N.W.A. member has been on the road promoting the Coors Light “Search for the Coldest MC” contest, of which he is a host and judge along with DJ Drama and DJ Khaled. Last night, semifinals in the rap contest were held in Atlanta with a special performance by 2 Chainz.
