How I ended up in a limo with Ice Cube and MC Ren from N.W.A. in 1989

A couple years back, rapper MC Ren shared a photo on social media of him, his fellow N.W.A. member Ice Cube and some unidentified guy in the back of a limo, sharing a laugh.

I’m that unidentified guy, and because I've been asked numerous times, here’s how that photo came to be. (Sorry to everyone who had guessed it was Michael Rapaport in the picture.)

Flashback Friday , never saw this pic before. Me and @icecube in a limo having a good time pic.twitter.com/k1dR0EXPNU — MC REN (@realmcren) November 21, 2020

In early 1989, I was a part-time sports reporter at the Milwaukee Sentinel, writing about whatever needed writing about – I believe I hold the record as longest tenured Bowler of the Week columnist at the Sentinel! – plus working in the newsroom editing copy, writing headlines, formatting stats, reading page proofs and that sort of thing.

But what I really wanted to do was write about music and so almost as soon as I started the job in November 1988, I harassed Jim Higgins into letting me freelance record reviews, concert reviews, book reviews and music features for the paper’s Let’s Go section. Once in a very rare while film critic Duane Dudek would even send me to do a movie review.

In addition to reggae, jazz and what we’d later call “alternative rock,” I also wrote about hip-hop, which was especially fertile at the time, though mostly on the East Coast. But L.A. was beginning to make itself heard.

Even if I never managed to make my dream dual interview with Milwaukee’s Iceberg Slim and Cali rapper Ice-T – who had taken his stage name as a tribute to Slim – happen (despite getting very close), I did connect with Pat Charbonnet at Priority Records, who was currently working the label’s latest release, N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” pretty hard.

That album was released 35 years ago today, on Aug. 8, 1988.

I reviewed the record for the newspaper and soon after found myself on the phone in my mom’s kitchen in Milwaukee interviewing Ice Cube, who was on the phone in his mom’s kitchen in L.A. (Yes, we both still lived at home!)

That article ran in the Sentinel as a preview for the group’s June 16, 1989 performance at the Arena (now the UWM Panther Arena) with Kid ‘n Play, Too Short, Kwame and a solo set by N.W.A.’s Eazy-E.

Then, Pat asked if I wanted to meet up with Ren and Cube three nights before the Brew City gig for a little promotional tour around Milwaukee. Of course, I said yes.

The night before that tour was to take place, I went to Mitchell Airport to meet them at their gate as they arrived along with promoter Tony Selig and a few others. This was pre-Sept. 11, when non-passengers could just stroll down to the end of any concourse at an airport.

We met, welcomed them, chatted briefly, and they went to their hotel.

The next morning, we met up outside the Eagles Club (now The Rave, but back then home to Omnibus, a club run by Selig) and we hopped into a couple 40-foot white limousines with its plush red interior, and off we went.

Our first stop was the Mainstream Megastore South on 27th Street and Loomis Road, which was said to have been selling “Straight Outta Compton” at “breakneck pace.”

But as I wrote later in the Sentinel, “the only autograph hunters were store employees who asked most everyone in the entourage for signatures whether they were in the group or not.”

By contrast, when the limo arrived at Mr. Music, a record store just north of Center Street on the east side of King Drive, a few hundred kids were waiting.

“The crowd gathered at Mr. Music grew larger and larger each minute,” I wrote, “with traffic slowing to a near halt while motorists tried to get hold of the postcard-sized concert advertisements that fans were having signed.

“The hour-long visit was still (ahem) too short for all to get authentic signatures and some resorted to having members of the entourage sign (things like) ‘To Terrance from Eazy-E’.”

Multiple kids assured me that I was N.W.A. member DJ Yella and insisted – despite my fervent denials – that I sign their cards with this name.

Next, we headed out, “making a quick getaway in an unmarked car in true Beatlemaniac style ... whisked off to WNOV-AM for some promo spots and an interview.”

A “few dozen well-informed youths” had already gotten there before us.

The next part was perhaps the most unusual.

“A small group turned into a motorcade of cars that followed the limousines back to promoter Tony Selig’s Shorewood street,” I wrote, noting that the scene of Selig and his 2-year-old daughter exiting a 40-foot limo, which was then beset by a group of eager rap fans, still had Selig’s neighbors talking afterward.

I remember MC Ren and Ice Cube chatting with fans and signing autographs and we talked about music in the car between stops, but it was clear they were pretty tired.

As I noted in my wrap-up later, they “spent their previous day off at a press conference in Cleveland and this one being whisked around Milwaukee with no food in their stomachs and no clean clothes in their suitcases.”

But, they did perk up “when listening to (and critiquing) the new LL Cool J CD ("Walking With A Panther," released that week), watching the final game of the NBA Championship series (the Pistons swept series against the Lakers that night) and grooving to the Too Short and Special Ed (who attended my high school a couple years after me) tapes they bought.”

I’d be surprised if they remembered anything about the experience in Milwaukee, moving, as they were, from city to city as part of a concert and promotional tour, and surely they’d have no memory of me, one of countless faces they’d encounter on that jaunt almost 35 years ago.

But it’s a memory I’ll always have and thanks to an unknown photographer (I'd guess it was the late Tony Selig), I at least have a photo from that crazy day.