Ice Cube Explains How to Rap About Being Poor When You’re Rich as Heck

Rapper-actor-producer Ice Cube, one of the stars of this weekend’s 22 Jump Street, has a new album in the works, Everthang’s Corrupt. When Cube visited Time for our 10 Questions page, we asked how the N.W.A. alum managed to rap about what it’s like to be poor when clearly he’s so successful.

While Cube, as he likes to be called, doesn’t give much money to political campaigns — “politicians not going to do more with my money than I can to help whatever cause or whatever situation I want to help”—he uses his music to do his own form of campaigning. He’s an Obama voter, too, and is happy with the President, despite the fact that Obama “reminds me of the black kid at a white school that don’t nobody want to play with. That’s fine—he goes in there and does his thing, does what he can.”

A longer version of the interview, in which Cube discusses some geometry and gives parenting tips, is below.