Ice Cube says he once had beef with Mr. Rogers.
The rapper recently revealed the late children’s television host sued him for using the theme song to his show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
The suit came after Cube’s 1990 album AmeriKKA’s Most Wanted. The West Coast rapper celebrated the 30th anniversary of the album’s release with an Instagram Live listening party on Wednesday. As he looked back on his career, he shared a few little known facts with fans.
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Cube said Rogers slapped him with a lawsuit for including part of his show’s iconic theme song titled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” on the hip-hop track “A Gangsta’s Fairytale.”
“I actually wrote this for Eazy-E. But y’all know what it is, we weren’t getting down at the time so I had to take it myself,” Cube explained. “It’s a trip. Because of this song, Mr. Rogers sued us. He was mad because we had the Mister Rogers theme at the beginning of this s—. ‘It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood’ and all that.”
The rapper said Rogers eventually got royalties from the hip-hop track, saying he was “getting like five cents a record until we took that part off.”
AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted dropped on May 16, 1990 and was Ice Cube’s first solo album following his exit from gangsta rap group N.W.A.
Mister Roger’s Neighborhood featured former minister Fred Rogers teaching pre-schoolers through music and make believe. The show ran from 1968 to 2001.
Rogers died in 2003. Over the past couple of years, he was the subject of the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and the 2019 feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks.
