This document crafts a discussion of key components of performative black masculinity while using them to bolster the idea of a "cool gangster" mode of black masculine performance that is promoted in the "gangsta" rap works of Ice Cube. The effects of "cool gangster" performative black masculinity on black women's issues are explored through the rap lyrics of Ice Cube during his days as a member of the seminal "gangsta" rap group, NWA, and in his early work a solo artist. Hip Hop Fancy offers a clear text transcription of the rap-album opus of Ice Cube's Death Certificate. The rapped lyrics and the spoken dialogue of every track of the 1991-issued compact disc are transcribed here to facilitate this document's use as a resource for literary criticism and textual study by the author. Although it is not a verbatim account of the lyrics as rapped by Ice Cube, the text of the lyrics transfer into print the substantial intent of the original Death Certificate language, metaphors, similes and poetic narratives through combined understandings of Standard English and Black Vernacular English. The idea is to mitigate the barrier to Death Certificate concerning language that may keep some from it as a written text. This document also provides notes to some of the original language of Death Certificate.
