“I Used to Love H.E.R.” by Common is almost universally acclaimed as one of the greatest rap songs ever. It captured the heart of hip-hop at its most contentious. The East Coast/West Coast war fractured the unity in the culture, to the point that New Yorkers were booing Outkast just for being different. Gangsta rap reflected a lot of the tragic violence in Black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the music industry and the media at large was exploiting all of it. It was a far cry from what hip-hop was all about, and everyone loved it—except Ice Cube.
The LA legend took particular offense to the second verse of “I Used to Love H.E.R.”. There, Common mused about hip-hop shifting over to the West Coast and the different styles it took on over the years. But it was one line in particular that triggered Ice Cube, even though it seems rather harmless in hindsight.
“Now, Black music is Black music, and it’s all good/I wasn’t salty she was with the Boyz n the Hood/’Cause that was good for her, she was becomin’ well-rounded/I thought it was dope how she was on that freestyle s**t,” Common rapped.
The line probably reads as a simple misunderstanding to fans today. But Cube ultimately took it as a diss. He figured the Boyz n The Hood reference was a slight to him and the West Coast as a whole. So he took it to the studio for his own diss.
Ice Cube Battles Common Over A Pretty Simple Misunderstanding
The former N.W.A. rapper responded on “Westside Slaughterhouse” by the Westside Connection. “All you suckas wanna diss the Pacific/But you busta n***as never get specific/Used to love H.E.R., mad ‘cause we f**ked a/P***y-whipped b***h with no Common sense,” Ice Cube snarled.
Common initially ignored the diss. However, when Ice Cube kept dissing him on BET alongside WC and Mack-10, he eventually responded with “The B***h in Yoo”. There, he trashed Cube’s style and argued he hadn’t made a great album in years. Then, he insisted that the whole thing was clearly a misinterpretation on Cube’s end, before telling him to stick to acting.
Common went pretty light, all things considered, not wanting to blow it out of proportion amid the East Coast/West Coast tensions. Ice Cube eventually dissed again on the Westside Connection’s “Hoo-Bangin’ (WSCG Style)”. But the feud eventually died out.
By 1997, Minister Louis Farrakhan organized a meeting between the two MCs to hash things out at the Nation of Islam headquarters. Years later, Ice Cube cast Common in Barbershop 3, marking a friendly truce between the pair. Moreover, he admitted to Talib Kweli in 2020 that his disses came from a dark time in his life. “Common was a good dude; I don’t think he deserved it. I was just in my feelings,” he told Kweli.
Photo by Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives
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