In a recent interview with Pigeons and Planes, Ice Cube reminisces about the time NWA got booed off the stage at the Apollo theater in New York City.
It was the late-1980s, before the group dropped their breakthrough album Straight Outta Compton. Sandwiched between New York groups EPMD, Big Daddy Kane and Run-DMC, the group hit the stage wearing their signature all-black attire and dripping jherri curls.
“We wasn’t hot yet,” Cube admits. “We all had watched It’s Showtime at the Apollo. So we all knew if it went bad, what was gone happen. So we hit the stage. And as soon as they saw them jherri curls, all we heard was ‘boo!’ I mean, before we even got a line out, they was booing. I guess they wasn’t feeling the jherri curls…Kurtis Blow had one. Why the fuck couldn’t we?”
Cube also said that later that day, Run from Run-DMC recognized them in the elevator. “Run was like ‘yo, you that kid Eazy E. That song is hot. They don’t know nothing about y’all right now but that song is hot, and y’all about to blow up.’ ”
Joseph Simmons proved to be correct. A few years later after NWA dropped Straight Outta Compton and Cube dropped AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, he returned as a solo artist, and the scene was totally different.
“This time when I cam back and did it as a solo artist, them people rushed the door. They was throwing money. They was just hype. It just had me on cloud 20 because all I had in my mind was this memory of being booed at the Apollo and you don’t get that out your mind.”
See the full clip below.
