Before he was an actor, before he made TV shows and movies with his own production company, before he had a record label, Ice Cube was a rapper.

Cube was just a kid in 1988 when he and NWA helped launch the gangsta rap genre with "Straight Outta Compton," a raw collection of catchy rhymes about inner-city injustices that appealed to audiences of all kinds.

Now he's returning to his rap roots with his first solo album in six years, "Laugh Now, Cry Later," out June 6.

In it, Cube unleashes a 20-track blend of bass-thumping beats and social commentary, with a dash of silliness thrown in for good measure.

"I didn't want to make a record that was like a history book," the 36-year-old says, sitting inside his Cube Vision office, the walls dotted with posters that include Muhammad Ali and the movie "Scarface." "I wanted to make a record that does what all good hip-hop do. It makes you feel good, it kinda pumps you up but it also shows you a part of life that you might not have been paying attention to or might not even know exists."

On "Laugh Now, Cry Later," the targets of Cube's lyrical fire include George W. Bush, money-drenched gangsta rappers, racial stereotypes and his own evolution as an artist. Rap sends a message, he says.

"That's really the essence of the music," he says. "Yeah, it's got ego and macho and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, it's music that you can learn from."

The godfather of gangsta rap ought to know. Before it was a genre with its own streetwise name, Cube and his crew called their rhymes "reality rap." They said what they wanted and people responded. Their work paved the way for other artists to express themselves, Cube says.

"If NWA didn't exist, would you have `South Park' or `The Osbournes'? Would you have `The Sopranos,' things like that?" he says. "We kind of made it all right to be yourself, say what you want to say. Artists don't have limits no more. I think that's the legacy of NWA and I'm proud of that."

Of course, music is still a business