Ice Cube has told the BBC that hip-hop has "suffered a setback" following the murder of Jam Master Jay last month. He feels the shooting has raised the spectre of rap's violent image, an image which he claims is actually far from reality.
"It's entertainment. Do people want to go kill Robert De Niro, you know, when he does Casino or whatever? It's music... their usic never promoted any kind of violence. Run-DMC was not about that, Run-DMC was about the art, not about the bling bling or the gangsterism. All that kind of stuff came after what Run-DMC had established, which was the art, the poetry and the music. It's just distorted right now."
Ice Cube was also keen to distance the shooting from the old feuds between the hip hop communities of the East and West coasts. "Right now there's no beef in the air. If people got beefs it's personal beefs with each other, but there's nothing that's coastal or bi-coastal about it."