Daily Jam - It Was a Good Day

Question: Do teenagers still drive aimlessly around town on weekends looking for something to do?

As I don’t currently know any teenagers (my oldest niece is still 12*, so she doesn’t count), I don’t have anyone to ask. We certainly did when I was in high school, and if movies like American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused are to be believed, it had gone on for decades before I got there. Driving through the city, streetlights and neon signs reflecting on the window glass, listening to music, looking for parties, looking for girls, looking for trouble, weekend after weekend with nothing to do, the only plan being to find something. There were fun nights, and amazing nights, and nights that went completely bust, but the jams were constant and often provided the perfect score to all of these evenings of adolescent event-making, the chords, melodies, and lyrics burning themselves into the images of my memory.

Ice Cube came up a lot.

I have to admit that my adulation of one O’Shea Jackson (that’s Ice Cube to all of us), and to 1992’s “It Was a Good Day” in particular, must certainly be credited to a good friend of mine who relentlessly jammed the song (and its delightful remix) in his car throughout high school and well into college. It was the kind of song that everybody memorized the lyrics to, the kind of song we drove around everywhere listening to, the kind of song that if someone didn’t actually like it, they just smiled and rolled with it anyway. I don’t know when the honest and true turning point for gangsta rap really pushing itself into the mainstream is, but Ice Cube’s string of solo offerings in the early 90’s certainly was a nudge in that direction, The Predator being the apex.

I don’t know if Ice Cube ever envisioned a bunch of suburban white boys (and girls) quasi-religiously spouting and repeating his verses over cans of cheap beer and cigarette butts, or hollering them out into the night from the open windows of borrowed cars and trucks, but I think that ultimately, he’d be okay with it. I’m sure he at least enjoyed the money.

And so, for your listening entertainment, Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” as well as the kinder, gentler (radio-friendly) remix. I love both, and you should too.

For even more fun, insert your own name wherever Cube mentions his, and live the braggadocio.

*My oldest niece is now 20 and in college, and my youngest is 16, but i still don't have an answer.

And the remix.