Obviously, not every cut here is prime material- placing "Go to Church" first is a canny bit of sequencing, since it immediately puts you face-to-face with everything you've been trying to forget about 21st century Cube, 21st century Snoop, and the three years in which Lil Jon was forcing people into making head-bussa anthems against their best interests. Louis and act as one of many germ cells that spread "gang violence where it was never seen before." everybody and they mama sell dope") leads a couple of Cali gangbangers to set up shop in St. Existing somewhere in between is "My Summer Vacation", which deftly explores how supply and demand ("in L.A. "What Can I Do" works in reverse, a displaced dealer too unlucky to die young, forced to work in McDonald's as a freshly-released inmate with no marketable skills. Take the immortal first line from "Bird in the Hand"- "Fresh out of school cause I was a high school grad/ Gots to get a job cause I was a high school dad." Slowly, Cube becomes not necessarily an outlaw, but someone almost bemusedly starts living outside of the law ("Now I remember, I used to be cool/ Until I stopped filling out my W-2") until the government has to give a shit out of custodial concern.
It's a little disappointing that "Who's the Mack?" isn't included, because in each of its acts, the circumstance can be explained with "you knew the game and you still ended up on your back." Yes, there are endemic societal problems that leave people with no choice, but no one's absolved, especially since most of the characters realize the situation and yet find themselves dumb enough to be doing wrong anyway. The petty thugs here are more likely to be dealing with the consequences of their actions instead of enjoying wealth or exploring the minutiae of their illegal dealings, something that stands in stark relief of the nihilism that's come to afflict most drug rap of the 21st century.
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More often than not, it's a bracing reminder of a potency that's been diluted through the filter of one dubious movie choice after another- Cube's rarely mentioned as one of hip-hop's greatest storytellers, but an economy of words and deft hand with plot have injected much of his politically minded material with a timelessness that's actually pretty sad (and not just because the boogeyman is always named "Bush"). Against those odds, The Essentials mostly succeeds in balancing his MTV hits with trenchant deep cuts while properly weighing towards his earlier work without completely negating everything he's done since 1994.
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