Rapper Ice Cube calls out DNC's messaging, tells blacks to 'make them earn that vote'

Rapper Ice Cube called out the Democratic Party over the weekend and asked, "What's in it for the Black community?" Ice Cube, whose real name is O'Shea Jackson, made a video where he encouraged black Americans to make Democrats and Republicans earn their vote in the 2020 election.

The former N.W.A. rapper was extremely skeptical of the messaging from last week's Democratic National Convention, which included speeches by Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton.

"A lot of people getting up [at the 2020 DNC] talking and everybody really eating it up, throwing their hands in the air like they just don't care — but what I didn't hear was: what's in it for us? What's in it for the Black community? Besides the same old thing we've been getting from these parties," Ice Cube said in the video released on Saturday. "What's in it for us, for real?"

"I didn't hear anybody mention a Contract with Black America, and I don't know why because its one of the most comprehensive reform documents that have come around in a long time that could really address the problem," Ice Cube said in the three-minute video. "The way it looks, they don't really have a problem. Everybody talkin' about, 'Get Trump out, get Trump out, get Trump out.' If you vote, that's gon' happen on the first day. So, now what? Trump out, now what? What do we get in the first 100 days? That's what we're trying to figure out. What do we actually get that they could give us overnight like that?"

Ice Cube's Contract with Black America calls for a "more perfect union" and a "complete paradigm shift in how we run our institutions and operate our country."

"Instead of looking for incremental reform, the Contract with Black America tries to address the root causes of racism in our society and develop a roadmap for a comprehensive solution," the document reads. "Beyond the obvious, we need to focus on the areas of banking and finance, justice, policing, education, Hollywood depictions, as well as a system of reparations. None of these work in isolation, this plan looks at the systemic core of racism as a whole, and only in that way can a true solution be born."

In his video the California-based rapper and actor asked, "What do we actually get?"

"They just pulled $3 trillion out their a** and gave it to their friends," Jackson said of the money allocated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act. "That's American taxpayer money. That's your money that they just gave away."

"Where's our f***ing bailout? Where's the bailout? Not the PPP loan that they didn't give us, where's the bailout? I don't want to hear about deficit, I don't want to hear about what our generations going to have to pay," Ice Cube stated. "If we don't have s**t, they ain't going to have anything to pay nothing."

"So we gotta start something right now," Ice Cube declared. "Democrats don't seem like they got a plan, Republicans don't seem like they got a plan for us."

"So how the hell you gon' vote for them? Make 'em earn that vote. They can start today. Make they a** earn that vote. Stop playing with these people and maybe they'll stop playing with you," Ice Cube concluded.

(Content Warning: The following video contains strong language)

Last month, Ice Cube wrote an op-ed in The Hill where he unveiled his Contract with Black America and expressed caution in trusting the Democrats.

"Do we actually believe Biden and the Democrats will make real differences unless we make them commit to wholesale change? MLK himself doubted the political will of the White liberal," Jackson wrote. "The objective is not handouts to assuage white guilt, nor do we want White's equality diminished either. We need White's to look within and be honest about how they benefit from white privilege, and always will, unless our society reimagines what America should have looked like in the beginning and does the hard work of reform to get our country where it should be."

Also last month, Ice Cube said that Hollywood should invest in black-led projects as a form of reparations.

"I just think it's a form of reparations from the entertainment industry if they all had to invest a certain amount of money into the studio each year as payment for all the damage they've done to black people," Ice Cube said.

Ice Cube made headlines in June when NBA legends Charles Barkley and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were critical of professional athletes and celebrities who have voiced anti-Semitic views, including Jackson. In June, The Daily Beast wrote an article titled, "Ice Cube's Long, Disturbing History of Anti-Semitism."