Ice Cube heads to Sydney for Straight Outta Compton

The remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

“I had seen the new trailers already even before [MC Ren] made those statements – Cube had sent me the new trailers – and it was just a matter of timing, that’s all”, Yella says.

Written by Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman, Compton is the kind of movie that can sweep you up in its thrall one moment and then leave you scratching your head the next. “I did a lot if research and watched a lot of old N.W.A. videos and interviews to study his style and mannerisms back then”. I’m proud of the group. In 2013, singer and Dre’s ex-girlfriend Michel’le alleged the producer used to beat her when they were dating in the ’90s, though she never brought any legal action against him.

AP: Kids often think their parents are dorky in some way.

The rapper – who in “F**k Tha Police” famously warned, “Ice Cube will swarm on any motherf****r in a blue uniform” – sees N.W.A.in the tradition of non-violent protest, using the power of language – however strident – rather than weapons. You can’t play with it. Don’t dance around it. Don’t be scared to say what you know you need to say.

Ice Cube: Seeing my son getting roughed up by the police is not fun. I want to get back to the core of what I love to do. They put me through hard work; two years of auditions, callbacks, three different acting coaches and techniques, and also they flew me out to New York to live out there for a week and I had to do boot camp with a cross-trainer just to get in shape.

Jackson: I’ve been seeing him rap these words forever, you know? In a scene that manages to be one of the film’s most powerful and phoniest, the group is shown hanging out in front of the studio taking a break from recording their first album when a squad auto pulls up and proceeds to humiliate and harass them because they look like gangbangers. When we first meet him, he narrowly escapes being killed in a guns-drawn dispute at a dope house that’s raided by the LAPD – maybe the only time in his short, tragic life that a brush with the cops will bounce in his favor. So he has a knack for the stage.

“I met with Dre, got to sit down with him. In retrospect, I wouldn’t change anything, the bad or the good”.

AP: Ice Cube, would you ever write an autobiography? I was having a conversation with Cube recently about how this filmmaking process has inspired me to return to the studio. As it turned out, as soon as Mitchell stepped in front of the camera, he was so spot-on that many told him it was as if they were seeing a ghost – “for me, that was the highest compliment and it meant so much to me”.