Singin’ like a Soprano

In a recent interview promoting “Laugh Now, Cry Later,� his first album in six years, hip-hop elder Ice Cube took partial credit for the state of art today -- or at least for “The Sopranos.� His claim was that by pushing the limits of decency with songs such as the notorious “F--- Tha Police� in the 1980s, his Compton-based “reality rap� group NWA had unleashed artistic expression that set the stage for adventurous popular culture such as HBO’s organized-crime opera.

What the hard-core rapper turned movie star didn’t admit is how much like the tormented kingpin Tony Soprano he himself has become.

On the head-bobbing, tough-talking “Laugh Now, Cry Later,� (in stores Tuesday), Ice Cube presents himself as a wise but still wicked player with a sharp sense of morality and an equal propensity for self-indulgence and rage. Sound familiar? This conflicted antihero, the enthrallingly messed-up personification of power-corrupted masculinity, existed long before the don of New Jersey started seeing a shrink. He’s in Raymond Chandler’s novels, Sam Peckinpah’s films, David Mamet’s plays. Ice Cube’s been courting this role since he declared himself “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted� on his 1990 solo debut, and on “Laugh Now, Cry Later� he’s fully aged into it.

“You got your daddy’s mouth, talk like a criminal,� Cube sneers on “Child Support,� one of the album’s most powerful and confounding tracks. As menacing strings and explosions set the rhythm, this real-life father of four builds a metaphor about rap’s latest generation as his bastard brood, and himself as a father who’s simultaneously “deadbeat� and punishing.

The lyric is profoundly creepy -- what kind of father figure fantasizes about hurting his kids so badly they’ll need paramedics? Yet it’s also undeniably effective, an evil nod toward Common’s 1994 classic “I Used to Love H.E.R.� (which described rap as a sweetheart-turned-whore by NWA-style gangsta rap, setting off a brief feud between the Chicago emcee and Cube). The track lays down the patriarchal law in true, ugly Mafioso fashion.

Throughout “Laugh Now, Cry Later,� Cube’s rhymes alternate between bitter wisdom about dead-end lives in the inner city and the prison system, and impudent, often sleazy assertions of personal pull. It’s not surprising, given mainstream hip-hop’s endless cliches about the mack-daddy lifestyle he first described so vividly 20 years ago, that Cube’s politics feel more distinctive than his pimp postures -- just as the album’s most memorable music builds on the lush, driving G-funk NWA pioneered, while the more predictable tracks (produced by latter-day stars including Scott Storch and Lil Jon) simply repeat current formulas.

Cube has intertwined gangsta boasting and social protest throughout his career -- it’s another key element of the righteous-outlaw paradox he inhabits -- but the current presidential administration has lent new focus to his muckraking. The president’s name pops up often, notably in some neat wordplay that connects the younger Bush to Bill Clinton through funk prophet George Clinton; most striking, however, is Cube’s observation that this Texas-born scion regularly wipes the floor with the so-called “players� of the street. “It’s a hustle called capitalism....Recognize who’s a hustler, George W,� he declares during one of several narratives that place the criminal hierarchies of Compton and other cities within a larger sphere of systematic oppression. The orchestrations of DJs Green Lantern, Teak & Dre and others sharpen the focus.

Cube’s been bringing attention to such connections since his youthful days angering the LAPD, and he’s showing more skill than ever at connecting the dots. Not so his boasting, which often feels overblown. Fighting the soft image he’s accrued by starring in comedic family films (reporters can stop calling him “cuddly� in profiles) and defying hip-hop’s inherent, if fading, dismissal of anyone over age 30, the bullet-voiced emcee comes off more hardhearted than he should on the album’s tediously sexist Snoop Dogg duet “You Gotta Lotta That,� or Lil Jon’s driving-but-hollow crunk homage “Church.� Cube can’t stop warning younger rappers (and women) of his prowess. His blustering detracts from his good humor and his insight.

Ice Cube is at his best when he trusts his own game, as on the memoir-in-rhyme “Growin’ Up,� which features a sweet Minnie Riperton sample, or the painful prison fable of the title track. But his severe machismo is key to his identity as a rapper, a source of catharsis his fans appreciate.

Shouting along with his diatribes at the record release party for “Laugh Now, Cry Later� on Saturday night at the House of Blues, the sold-out crowd grew giddy with its own boldness.

But Cube couldn’t help but smile, even during his harshest verses. As he led his fans (including such famous ones as fellow rapper-actors Snoop Dogg and Ludacris) through the hits that established his empire, occasionally even breaking into a little dance, he seemed almost amused by his paterfamilias role.

Maybe someday he’ll feel free enough to tone down the thug life in the studio too, but that’s unlikely. As Tony might say, you gotta stay strong. You never know who you’re going to have to throw off the boat next.