Upstairs in the studios that house New York's Hot 97 radio, a small knot of people await the afternoon's special guest. And downstairs in the building lobby, the 37-year-old man they're waiting for is wearing exactly what you'd expect: black. Black jacket, black sneakers, black-on-black Dodgers cap. His face is relaxed, forehead uncreased, eyebrows in repose. In fact, he looks exactly like he did six years ago, when he dropped his last solo joint. And that, in turn, looks exactly like he did fifteen years ago, when he said I'ma cut that Jheri juice and get a bald head. The only real difference, the only thing that says 2006, is his black t-shirt. It says, in big silver letters, CRUNK!!!. Below that, in smaller print, energy drink. But because Ice Cube looks exactly how he always has, the few people walking by invariably notice him.

"Cuuuuuube." This from a squad of four.

"Ayo Cube!" This from a young cat with his peoples. He doesn't look old enough to vote yet, let alone drink legally. But he's smiling as his head swivels, walking away, but with his attention on the man in black.

Ice Cube looks up, nods. Smiles. "Ay, man."

Young Cat With His Peoples says, "I like that show, baby! That show is tight!" Black. White., the whose-race-is-it-anyway documentary TV series that Cube co-executive-produced, premiered last night, and New York's been buzzing about it all day.

"Thanks, man. 'Preciate it." Despite the smile, this last bit sounds like straight Do-Boy, straight outta Singleton, straight outta Compton.

"Cube!" This from two fortysomething white dudes with old-school outer-borough accents: Ireland by way of Q-Boro. "Cube! You gonna join Carpenters Local #608 or what?"

"Fa sho', man. I'ma ..." He pauses. Just for the barest split second. Enough time to read his audience and know what they want to hear. "...I'ma teach y'all how to DROP THE FUCKIN' HAMMER!"

The white guys cackle. They love it. "Keepin' it real!" one of them exclaims.

It's nothing but love for The Nigga You Love To Hate.

* * *

There aren't many pedigrees in hip-hop to rival O'Shea Jackson's. He met Dr. Dre when he was 14 and wrote the song "Boyz N The Hood" when he was 16. He was a founding member of NWA, wrote Eazy-E's lyrics, then bounced after a bitter dispute over money (famously, he received only $30,000 for the double-platinum Straight Outta Compton). He headed to New York and linked up with the Bomb Squad for the mind-blowing Amerikkka's Most Wanted, then followed it up with the equally skullcrushing West Coast classic Death Certificate.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of his contribution to rap. He took the political consciousness of KRS-One and Chuck D and injected the clear-eyed menace of LA gang culture, merging the heady with the hardcore more successfully than any MC before or since. His trademark sneer is one of the enduring images in hip-hop's young history.

And just as with the union guys in the Hot 97 lobby, Cube got where he was by reading his audience. KRS and Chuck were conscious MCs, but Cube took their MO and injected some cleared-eyed menace. Looking back, it's clear the years around 1990 were his. "Cube's always been my favorite rapper," says Lil Jon, who produced three tracks on the new joint, as well as featuring Cube on a couple of his own songs recently. "I used to listen to that NWA album every fuckin' day. Leavin' high school, me and my boy in his Toyota Tercel with the house speakers in the back bumpin' NWA."

Looking back, the years around 1990 belonged to no one else. Inarguably, Cube's artistic achievement, and his subsequent foray into the movie game, paved the way for the cultural dominance hip-hop enjoys today. It's been a long time, though. As painful as it is, the question stands: is Ice Cube still relevant? Thanks in large part to the success he's found in Hollywood, it's been six years since his last solo work, the simultaneously released War & Peace discs. (Westside Connection, Cube's supergroup with WC and Mack 10, issued Terrorist Threats in '04). And honestly, even though War went platinum, and Peace went gold, it's been closer to a decade since the streets were really talking about Cube the rapper.

Heads still have love for Cube. Always will. Unfortunately, legend status isn't an insurance policy for longevity in the game: Rakim, Chuck D, and too many others have all struggled to maintain their relevance with listeners who consider 1996 "old school." With Cube, some of what he represented-hard beats, harder lyrics-is still in vogue, but some of what he represented-Nation of Islam knowledge of self, rage, venom-are not. And he's not one to bend to trends like talking about his bank account or jewels: "That shit is cool, but I grew up in an era when music I was listenin' to was relevant to what I was goin' through, regardless who was doin' it. I didn't care how much money rappers had."

But whether hip-hop has stagnated isn't the issue; it's whether Cube can reach out to a generation who knows him from the multiplex more than the 106th & Park countdown. "It's a harder game," Cube allows, "but I come in it just worried about Ice Cube fans. That's it. If I get my fanbase, the record is a success to me. I've always been around a million, million two, million three. So that's my goal, to get my fans, and then from there we'll see what the record do." The response shows a bracing realism. Through his entire career, Cube's gone platinum six times out of seven albums, but he's only broken two million once, with The Predator-and that one took eight years to do it.

And now he's taking aim at those 1.3 million fans. Laugh Now, Cry Later is a close-knit Cali affair. Snoop and WC and Kokane show up, Mike Epps throws in a li'l interlude, and there's only a few boldface names behind the boards-notably, Scott Storch, Lil Jon and Swizz Beats. "He didn't just go and get tracks from Boo-Koo and Stoo-Foo and Mu-Mu," says Swizz (and no, we don't know who he's talking about either). "He got a good ear. He's comin' to the East, the South, the West-to the cats who are changing the industry."

The album eschews that ruled-by-committee, let's-appeal-to-every-region flavor that so many records insist on. It's some West Coast shit, basically. Some spare, bouncing, hard-knock shit, perfect for Cube's deliberate baritone. Even the mega-producers bring tracks that are tailor-made to an LA sound. "Cube is a triple-triple OG," Swizz says. "I just tried to put myself in the consumer's place. What the fuck would I wanna hear from Cube? So 'Stop Snitching,' which I did, you can definitely Crip-walk to that one."

Then there's the first single, the Storch-helmed "Why We Thugs." It's got those handclap snares reminiscent of the Sir Jinx era, like "Steady Mobbin'" recast for the '06, and it has Cube doing what Cube does best: politicized hardore. "Call me an animal up in the system/but who's the animal who built this prison?/...I got caught by 5-0/grandmother came to court with her bible/but when the judge hit the gavel/now I'm too far for my family to travel/I just came unraveled/socked the DA before I got gaffled/owned by CA, state property/just like the year 1553..."

"We ain't tryin' to reinvent the wheel," says Cube. "The album is very West Coast. Just bein' true to myself, and let the chips fall where they may."

* * *

So let's talk about it. The Hollywood shuffle. After a good decade of balancing hip-hop and movies, movies became a full-time enterprise for Cube. He calls it "the path that was laid out." Taking on more projects as a producer and executive producer, gathering financing and overseeing development.

There's a problem, though. Hollywood giveth, and it also taketh away. With Boyz N The Hood, Cube became the first rapper to put the cinema on smash, and other projects contributed to a solid film career: Friday established his core following, Three Kings his acting chops, and the Barbershop franchise (which he also executive-produced) his mogul status. When he made Are We There Yet, though, things took a turn. You know you felt it too. Here was Cube, arguably the greatest rapper of the early 90s, making a kids movie-with Disney, no less. What happened to "Burn, Hollywood, Burn"?

"Hollywood is an untameable animal," Cube says. "If we burned down Hollywood, shitty movies would still get made. I felt like I could talk about it from the sidelines, or I could go in and try to change the system by doing a movie like Friday. If nobody was gonna give us a shot, we took a shot. And it sparked off new wave of creativity, a new way of Hollywood thinkin'. A lot of people getting a lot of cake-people like Tyler Perry, whoever is comin' through saying 'I'ma do a movie the way I wanna do it, be the person I am."

"Besides," he continues, "there ain't too many niggas like me in Hollywood anyway. So if I stick with that, and not try to go Hollywood, I'm winnin'." That's the question, though. Everyone makes movies they're not entirely proud of-hell, even Denzel has his Carbon Copy (look that one up). So fans are willing to forgive missteps like Ghosts of Mars and Anaconda. As Cube says, "Good projects are few and far between. So whenever you got a chance to do one, you better jump on it., because your next three movies might be shitty and you don't wanna do 'em. "

But partnering with Disney as an executive producer seems like a whole other type of decision. "It's not like I can say 'damn, there's this Nat Turner movie I wanna do-y'all gimme $40 million to do it!'" Cube says. "It's a game where you're not only looking for movies that you're interested in doing, but you gotta coincide with the company you're doin' the movie with. It's gotta be a movie they're interested in making. With Are We There Yet?, I [realized] my core fans now are grown with kids. I have to do something to reach back and at least introduce their kids to me. It ain't in a hip-hop way, but it's in a way. My name is gonna be on their brain, they'll grow up and hopefully pick up a record or two."

It hints at the business acumen honed by 15 years of deal-making. If Big Tobacco can use Joe Camel to hook kids, what's to say Cube can't use a goofy family road-trip to recruit a new generation of sneering hip-hop fans?

* * *

In the car on the way downtown to Hot 97, Cube talks about coming back to hip-hop, and allows a glimmer of curmudgeon to come through. "New booties who don't respect the game always mess it up," he says, "but it's really up to hip-hop to stop givin' so much light to dudes that are so new. It's like the NFL-they wanna give all the light to the rookies but they don't wanna give a ten-year veteran his due. They'd rather shunt him off like 'he old'-but he's the one that's keepin' this stinky li'l league together."

And when he rolls up into the radio station, it's like the high-school homecoming of the MVP. Program directors run down the hall to pay respects, and Angie Martinez and DJ Enuff are as effusive off the air as they are on. Mr. Cee even came into work early, it turns out, to spend some time with Cube.

On-air in the studio, Angie-acting mock-offended-asks Cube why he never comes by her show. "I don't show up until I got product," he says. "I disappear, I come back, and when I come back I either got a movie or a record. I'm not out there, overexposed, goin' to everything, bein' in everything, and got nothin' to share. I think people appreciate that I show up with product, and it's decent half the time."

Movies, music, television. It's all product. And everyone's a fan, even if they don't know it yet.