Wicked: My college theme song.

“1, 2, 3 and I come with the wicked style and you know that I’m from the wicked crew. Act like ya knew, cuz I got everybody jumpin to the voodoo kick it.”

Those are the opening lines from one of my favorite songs ever, “Wicked” by Ice Cube. For every point in my life there is an internal soundtrack with way too many songs to name, but I don’t need to dig heavy through the archives to tell you that the song “Wicked” by Ice Cube was my signature song on the road to earning my first college degree.

Ice Cube has always been my top favorite rapper of all time, so it is safe to say that his music will always be a part of my internal soundtrack to every time in my life and college is no exception. Literally every Ice Cube album was part of the soundtrack to my college experience, but the song “Wicked” was no doubt, the most influential.

I remember exactly how it came to be. I started my first semester of college at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, North Carolina in the fall of 2011. For some reason all of Ice Cube’s earliest solo albums were what I was listening to the most at this time. These albums really captured the essence of a new beginning for me when I first made it to college and his third full length album The Predator ended up being the one I listened to the most.

“Wicked” was the first hit single off of this album and I vividly remember the moment it became my theme song for college. I did not have a car when I first started college, so my dad was giving me a ride everyday being that he too was in college where I was and was close to getting his degree in nursing. It was a cloudy Monday morning and we were leaving a gas station by where we lived at and as we made our way to school I started playing “Wicked” and the base of the song’s beat and Ice Cube’s upbeat tone and lyrics gave me a boost of energy to which coffee could not compare. “1, 2, 3 and I come with the wicked style and you know that I’m from the wicked crew. Act like ya knew, cuz I got everybody jumpin to the voodoo kick it.” I initially did not realize how much these lyrics were pumping my blood with inspiration to want to soak up as much knowledge as I could when I made it to class. In a goofy way I kind of imagined I was Ice Cube, in the sense that I thought I was the baddest man on the planet. “Wicked” would eventually go from just being my audio coffee dose before class to being my morale booster in the midst of my school work battles.

From English class, to History and Music Appreciation among many other classes, I started to initiate the task of carrying out all of my assignments and studying for all of my test with the phrase “Let’s get wicked.” as a direct reference to the song. I eventually got to a point where the lyrics had a whole new meaning. “Wicked rhymes, picket signs while me and the mob got a trunk full of nines. Play ya and I’ll slay ya, I got the maker by the hanger ready to BUCK-BUCK-BUCK and it’s a must you DUCK-DUCK-DUCK before I bust. Lookin for the one that did it, but like En-Vogue, no ya neva gonna get it, cuz I’m the one with the fat mad skills and I won’t choke like the Buffalo Bills.”

On the surface, these lyrics just sound like what we Hip Hop fans call a dope rhyme scheme, but for me these lyrics took on a whole new meaning in relation to my college experience. For me these lyrics meant all of this schoolwork thinks it’s going to overwhelm me, but it has another thing coming. College may be tough, but I promise I’m not only tougher, but ‘wicked’ and if the pressure of this place thinks it’s going to break me then it better think again. When I made it to the check point of finally getting the hang of a particular subject I was struggling with, the ending lyrics of the second verse perfectly spelled out my confidence level: “Who didn’t know I was funky as Wilson Pickett, dig it, cuz I get wicked.” For me this translated to who would have ever thought that I was finally get a grip on this tough subject I was struggling with? I did because I’m wicked. Whenever I successfully completed an assignment, passed a quiz or test, and finished a semester “Wicked” was my battle cry victory dance. The ending lyrics of the third verse made it clear how I felt after accomplishing my academic goals: “Through with the picket signs, take this job and stick it, bigot, cuz I get wicked.” For me this meant I have successfully completed this level on my journey to the next stage in life, so every pitfall that tries to take me down and hinder me can kick rocks and move along, because I am the victor and the champion and nothing is going to stand in my way.

“Wicked” not only captured the essence of the journey through my academics, but also what was taking place in the world around my school life as well. By 2012 the shooting death of Trayvon Martin took place and by April of 2012 the 20 year anniversary of the 1992 LA Riots due to the verdict of the beating of motorist Rodney King had come around. Like the rest of the album The Predator, “Wicked” contained commentary on these issues with lines like: April 29th was power to the people and we might just see a sequel. So even though “Wicked” was originally a reflection of 1992, with all these issues re-emerging at that then-current time, “Wicked” was quite literally a reflection of my 2012.

In the summer of 2013 after my second full year in college I went to visit my family in California and being that I can rap my older cousin let me come to his studio and make my own songs so he told me I could pick instrumentals from my favorite songs and just freestyle over the beats if I wanted and one of the instrumentals I rapped over was “Wicked”. I basically made my own version of the song with my own lyrics and the song became really popular with my family and friends. Eventually the song became part of the soundtrack to my college experience and in the same manner of the original, my cover version of “Wicked” became an academic battle cry.

Times of misfortune would of course find their way to me in my college journey. From having to take a couple of years off from school because I was struggling with financial aid problems, to the deaths of loved ones occurring all at once around me. “Wicked” was the spirit lifter that reignited the will of determination in me to keep moving forward and carrying out my goal of finishing school. Eventually I earned my associates degree in Arts from Guilford Technical Community College and with so many songs on the soundtrack to my school journey to graduation, “Wicked” was still the most influential of all.

When I graduated I did not take the time to decorate the cap from my cap and gown like everyone else. It was not until graduation day that I realized everyone decorated theirs, after walking across that stage and picking up my degree I later asked myself what would I have put on my cap if I had decorated it when I first graduated. Many geeky ideas went through my mind, but I now know that if I could go back and put something on my cap to express the spirit of my college journey, it would be “Wicked”.