A couple of years ago, I wrote about why hip-hop doesn’t really do covers of past songs and albums like other genres. I still think it’s pretty good, but last week, rap fans got an object lesson in how harshly a cover can get judged when Logic put a melodic spin on Ice Cube’s 1992 classic “It Was A Good Day.”
While Logic doesn’t see hip-hop as a competition, plenty of rap fans were appalled that he would deign to recreate such a seminal song from the hip-hop canon. However, he shrugged off the backlash on TikTok, claiming that he’d already received the most important co-sign: One from Ice Cube himself.
Replying to a comment that suggested he do a whole album of similar covers, Logic posted a whole new video saying, “It’s funny you should say that because I thought about doing that… Everybody’s all pissed off at me because I did a f*cking Ice Cube cover. Meanwhile, I texted Ice Cube and he’s like, ‘Man, keep on doing you, brotha.’ Who gives a fuck [about the backlash]?”
He also agreed about a potential covers album, positing he could use it for a good cause. “I should do a whole f*cking album, and just do a whole album of f*cking hard-ass ’90s records and call it Logic Greatest Hits, and get all them paid, and get them publishing, and take care of all the legends and the GOATs and the greats from the 90s.”
@logic Replying to @evil.morty.420 logic greatest hits coming soon!
While it seems that Logic may need a refresher on how publishing royalties work, it’s hard to be mad at him for working to flip a pretty negative situation into a helpful one, even if it doesn’t quite work the way he seems to think (many early pioneers of hip-hop do not own their publishing, so they probably wouldn’t get paid much, if at all, by a covers album). And while that may make some rap fans angry, it certainly does seem as though it’d generate some buzz.
To see Logic perform his own songs, you can check him out on tour with Juicy J.