POP MUSIC : The Rap Is: Justice : Ice Cube finally talks about the uprising that he says had to happen; he intends to keep focusing on the injustices that fuel the rage

“First of all, I don’t even call it a riot, I call it an uprising,” says rapper Ice Cube, speaking for the first time publicly about the traumatic days and nights of burning, looting and beating in Los Angeles.

“I feel bad about people who lost their jobs, people who were beaten, the black-owned businesses that were burned down . . . but I think it had to happen if you were going to get people to take a deeper look at police, at poverty . . . and the circumstances in our community.

“Unfortunately in this country, quiet protest really doesn’t work. You can hold your signs. You can march. You can do all those things, but conditions aren’t going to change.”

America’s most galvanizing rapper is still talking tough.

It was Ice Cube who, as a member of N.W.A., wrote the 1989 gangsta rap anthem “F--- Tha Police,” and, as a solo artist, recorded two of the most explosive rap albums ever: 1990’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted” and 1991’s “Death Certificate.” He also won acclaim for his acting debut as the troubled, doomed Doughboy in John Singleton’s memorable “Boyz N the Hood.”

In his two solo albums, Ice Cube, 22, spoke of the anger and the rage of the ‘hood with an intensity and aggression that established him as rap’s most commanding--and controversial--young artist.

While he defended his work--including its hostility toward the police--as an accurate reflection of a disenfranchised minority, many observers, including some critics who normally support rap artists, branded it as irresponsible and hateful.

“Black Korea,” a track from “Death Certificate,” summarized the debate over Ice Cube’s music. In graphic language, the rapper warned Korean merchants to show more respect to black customers or face the possibility of their stores’ being burned down.

In the hours and days after the start of the L.A. riots, his music--along with the social commentary of such other rappers as Ice-T and Public Enemy--had an eerie ring of prophecy, and the media sought him out, hoping for insights into what happened.

Discouraged by much of the media criticism of his albums, Ice Cube refused more than 100 requests for interviews. He felt his views were already documented in his albums and that anything else he said might be taken out of context.

Besides, he was busy, making sure those close to him were safe and then meeting with gang leaders, encouraging the movement toward a truce. Mostly, however, he simply sat at home, like millions of others in Los Angeles, and watched the events unfold on TV. The only statement he made, through a press representative, was, “No justice, no peace.”

“I wasn’t surprised by what happened,” he says, sitting now in an office in the still tense Crenshaw/Florence area, just a few stop lights from Normandie, where Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and beaten.

“I knew that the decision in the Rodney King case was going to be not guilty as soon as they moved the case to Simi Valley.

“What happens is that America looks at black men in two ways. You have the nice black man, like a Bill Cosby, and you have the bad black man . . . the person you see going to jail at night on the news. To most Americans, especially in a place like Simi Valley, it is one or the other.

“If Rodney King was seen as a good black, then the officers would have been found guilty, but all through the trial, they kept saying that he was a monster . . . a wild animal . . . plus he had a past criminal record. To the jurors, he was a bad black so anything done to him was justified.”

By his own narrow definition, Ice Cube would be viewed by much of white America as a bad black man.

With his explicit language on record, his outspoken views and his scowl in publicity photos, he looks and talks like a gangbanger.

And he’s bound to raise eyebrows with “We Had to Tear This Mother ------ Up,” a song he has has written about the L.A. riots for his next album.

Sample lyrics:

Go to Simi Valley

Surely, somebody knows the address of the jury

Pay a little visit.

“Who is it?”

It’s Ice Cube

Can I talk to

The Grand Wizard?

Why keep reflecting the anger at a time when the community is aching for healing? Didn’t the uprising or riots raise new challenges for rappers? After the hours of sobering television footage, is there really any need to continue expressing rage?

Ice Cube is quick with a reply as he sits behind a desk in the second-floor office in an industrial area next to burned-out buildings on Crenshaw Boulevard.

“To be honest, I’m really no different after (the riots),” he says. “In a way, it confirms what I’ve been saying. The next record will be different, but it’s not because of what happened. I always try to change. My first two records were attempts to show everybody how we felt (in the community). The next one will be directed toward the black community and the justice system.”

His next album, which is due in November, will contain some material written before the riots and some songs, like “We Had to . . . ,” that that were written afterward.

“As soon as I heard on the radio that people were throwing rocks after the King verdict, I knew it was going to snowball and that it wasn’t going to stop until people got tired,” he says, speaking softly, with none of the theatricality or bluster of his rap style.

“The media and authorities like to concentrate on the looting and say it was just a bunch of criminals or thugs out there, but there were all kinds of people out there, women and children . . . poor people who wouldn’t have to loot if they had the money to buy things.

“That’s why, to me, it was a protest. It was a protest against the conditions and the injustice, not just the verdict, but the years of injustice. The looting that was done in South-Central was nothing like the looting done by the savings and loans. . . . You take everything that happened in fact and it was just a smidgen of what has happened to blacks all these years.

“I know people don’t like to hear this, but tension is still out there and something could tick it off again.”

One may disagree with some of his social views, but Ice Cube comes across during a two-hour interview as thoughtful and unfailingly polite. In a pop world filled with commercial strategy, he seems unusually straightforward.

Unlike many rappers, he doesn’t try to embellish his background with vague references to gang ties--something that might be tantalizing to suburban teen-agers who have embraced the “gangsta rap” that Ice Cube helped popularize with N.W.A. in the late ‘80s. He also doesn’t shy away from personal touches that some might describe as a bit too sentimental for a hard-core rapper.

Ice Cube has a disarming smile and he speaks lovingly, for instance, about his fiancee and his 14-month-old son.

The only moment of “pose” is when a photographer approaches.

For the 10 minutes that the camera is pointed at him, he adopts the scowl featured on his album covers.

“I don’t like to smile in photographs,” he says when asked about it.

In a revealing moment, he adds with a trace of the bittersweet innocence of Doughboy in “Boyz N the Hood”: “Life can be hard. I know a lot of guys who never smile, you know what I’m saying? I used to be like that . . . never saw anything funny. As far as making records, I was intense. Everything was serious. Everything is still serious, but I’m a little older. I’m able to understand things, put things into perspective.

“I even wrote a song for the new album called ‘It Was a Good Day,’ because there are days like that--days when nothing goes wrong, everything is cool, nobody I know got hurt. But the next song is ‘Ain’t My Day,’ which is a day where everything went wrong. The sad thing is some people never have the good days at all.”

Ice Cube, a muscular young man whose real name is O’Shey Jackson, grew up on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles near Washington High School, but he had advantages a lot of his friends didn’t. One was a tight family structure. He lived with an older brother and two older sisters as well as both parents. His mother and father both worked at UCLA--in maintenance and gardening, respectively.

“My mother worked nights and my father worked during the day so there was always someone home, keeping me pretty much in line,” he says. “Mothers who raise children alone do a tremendous job, but it’s hard for a boy not to have a father because they often feel they have to prove to other boys that they are a man.

“When you have a father there, he tells you proving you are a man is not what being a man is all about. A man don’t have to walk behind 100 people. A man stands alone and makes his decision alone.”

Though he had friends in gangs, Ice Cube says he was never attracted to them.

“I never saw any future in it,” he says. “I saw older gang members going to the pen and I couldn’t see myself getting locked up for a long period of time and expect to come out and be normal. I wanted a future for myself.”

Rap was just a hobby, though he was good enough at writing lines that he eventually teamed up with N.W.A. and made a record. Still, his concern was a career. After high school, he studied architectural drafting at a trade school.

It was only when the N.W.A. record became a surprise success that he began devoting full time to music. The group’s debut album sold a million copies in six weeks.

But Ice Cube eventually left the group in a dispute over money. Where there was a bit of show-biz bravado to N.W.A.’s work, Ice Cube’s own music exhibited a strong sense of artistry. He quickly joined Chuck D. of Public Enemy as rap’s most important figures.

For all the debate over Ice Cube’s music, the best of it displays the passion and purpose of a young man struggling to understand the anger in himself and in his community.

“I grew up a lot once I was on my own,” he says of his solo career. “When I was younger, I thought the best thing to do was to be the hardest rapper you could. . . . ‘I got 1,000 guns . . .’ and all that. But if you you stick to that, you become a comic book. I wanted to be more sincere with my lyrics, more truthful.”

In the liner notes to the last album, Ice Cube mentioned that the best place for young blacks is the Nation of Islam.

While sharing Chuck D.’s admiration for controversial Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan, Ice Cube says he is not a Muslim.

“I’ve heard people say I’m brainwashed and all that, but I am my own man,” he says, still in a soft, straightforward way. “I don’t agree with anybody on everything, I can think for myself. If you believe in God, you are your own religion. Your body is your temple or your church or your mosque.”

Ice Cube is wearing a black cap with the words “The Looters” on it during the interview, but it’s not as a wry statement on the L.A. turmoil. “The Looters”--whose title is in the process of being changed following the riots--is a new adventure film he is appearing in.

He was reluctant to accept the “Boyz N the Hood” role because he has seen so many musicians look foolish in films, but he agreed to do “Boyz” because the Doughboy character paralleled the inner-city portraits in his music.

Ice Cube was subsequently flooded with scripts, but he was careful not to rush into another project because he wanted to keep music his primary focus.

He eventually accepted the role in “The Looters” because he liked the script and it gave him a chance to team with Ice-T, a fellow gangsta rapper whom he admires. He has also written a screenplay titled “America Eats Its Own.”

But he’s concentrating on music again. His next step is the summer “Lollapalooza” tour with a variety of rock acts, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam.

Though he doesn’t talk about his music in positive or negative terms, the songs he describes from the next album seem to reflect a growing sense of social responsibility. “I’ve got a record about talking to police, which says basically, ‘I’ve got kids and a family and you’ve got kids and a family. . . . I’m not going to sit here and let you take my life and I know you don’t want me to take your life, so we need to come to some kind of understanding because the day you come in and do anything you want to me is over.’ ”

Another song, titled “Black Rag,” is about gangs and an end to the killing.

What about the gang truce? Is he optimistic that it will last? And what about conditions generally in the inner city?

A passing siren shrieks as Ice Cube considers the questions.

“It’s good that they want to put money into the community now, but if they had put this money in before it happened, you wouldn’t have had this,” he says finally. “The question is where the money goes now.

“What I want to do is have these Korean stores, these black-owned stores set up training programs for men and women out of work and for gang members so that this truce does have a chance to last.

“But the main thing is the black community has got to find its own strength. We need to work together and trust each other and build businesses, build a power structure. That’s how we’ll eventually get the respect of white America and become partners in this country.”