Ice Cube loved playing villainous Superfly in the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ film as he felt there were “no rules”.
The 54-year-old rapper and actor added the human-sized fly character in the newly-released animation – who says his dad created the crime-fighting turtles by dumping toxic waste down a sewer – is a street-wise “king of New York”-style character.
He told Capital XTRA’s ‘Evenings with Omah Howard’ radio show: “Playing a villain is great – there are no rules playing a villain so it was just fun to be able to let loose.
“Superfly is the king of New York – everybody knows his name in the streets.
“Nothing happens in New York without going through Superfly or it’s gonna be a problem.”
Ice – real name O'Shea Jackson Sr – stars alongside Seth Rogen, 41, in the turtles movie, who plays the heroes in half-shells’ mutant warthog nemesis Bebop.
He said about the joy of working with the ‘Funny People’ star: “Oh he’s cool man. You know Seth – he’s just a fun guy, so easy to get along with, he laughs at everything so he’s just a dude who… you wanna make him laugh when you’re working, you know you’re on the right track, it’s just an honour to work with him.
“I’ve been watching his work for two decades. My son had a chance to work with him in ‘Longshot’ and now it’s my turn – I’m happy.”
Micah Abbey voices turtle Donatello in the new animation, while Shamon Brown Jr is Michelangelo, Nicolas Cantu plays Leonardo and Brady Noon is Raphael – with Jackie Chan voicing their wise rat mentor Splinter.
Cube added starring in the film about the characters created in 1984 took him back to his early days of loving hip-hop at house parties – which he said could end up in shooting.
He said: “It depends on which party you went to, house parties could get real wicked, but see, people don’t slow dance no more, we used to dim the lights, we all up on it – we ain’t trying to show our moves, we trying to get close so it was a different style and then you had the ’hood dudes that come through, they wasn’t invited so what do they wanna do, turn the party out, they were ready to send everybody home so you might hear a little bap-bap-bap outside and you gotta move on, it was crazy.”
Listen to Capital XTRA’s ‘Evenings with Omah Howard’ Monday to Thursday from 7pm to 10pm.