Ice Cube was once gangsta rap's great chronicler of everyday brutality. Twenty years and a hugely successful family-comedy movie career later, he's content to spend his self-released ninth disc brandishing his OG rep ("Google me, bitch!") and defending his fading West Coast ("I'm down with Angelenos/Go downtown and give a bum a C-note"). But his rants get boring over track after track of bland Nineties G-funk (a promised collaboration with his estranged N.W.A homey Dr. Dre never came through). Only "Hood Robbin," a somber, seething indictment of post-housing-bubble America has that old realist magic, yoking the rage of Straight Outta Compton to the experience of people who took their kids to see Are We There Yet?

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."