Ice Cube gets his name on Goodyear blimp for charity

Ice Cube finally saw his name on the Goodyear blimp Monday, but it didn’t read: “Ice Cube’s a Pimp.”

Nearly 20 years to the day after releasing the hit song “It Was A Good Day,” the rapper-turned-actor arrived at the Goodyear blimp base in Carson to see his name in lights slowly motor across the South Bay and Los Angeles skies.

The song is a slice-of-life picture of what it’s like to have a good day for a South L.A. gangster. In it, he rhymes about eating a good breakfast, avoiding conflict with his enemies, having sex, playing dominoes, and: “Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp/And it read: ‘Ice Cube’s a pimp.’ ”

On Monday, the blimp’s neon sign read: “Ice Cube says: Today is a Good Day.” It also named A Place Called Home, a South Los Angeles charity that benefited from an online grass-roots campaign to actually put Ice Cube’s name on the blimp.

Ice Cube, born O’Shea Jackson, called the results “pretty cool.”

“It’s such a great cause, such a great day,” said the rapper, who is currently promoting his new film “Ride Along.” “Rap is a mix of fantasy and reality. I never thought in a million years it would really happen. Just on the cool tip, it’s cool.”

Four friends in New York City started the “Good Day Blimp” online campaign earlier this month, seeking $25,000 in donations on Crowdhoster to donate to the charity. Their plan was to convince Goodyear to finally honor Ice Cube’s wish if, in exchange, they donated the money raised to A Place Called Home. The organization provides a variety of educational programs, mentorship and counseling for at-risk children and teens in South Los Angeles.

The plan worked.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. uses its three airships primarily for marketing purposes and charity. Over the past two decades, the company has been repeatedly approached to fulfill Ice Cube’s song lyric.

“We’ve been telling people for years that it’s an urban legend (that the lyric was used on the blimp),” said Elizabeth Flynn, a Goodyear spokeswoman. “We took a look at the Good Day Blimp campaign and saw that it would benefit a great charity. We said: ‘We’re going to do this but we reserve the right to write the message.’ We came up with: ‘It was a good day.’ We don’t feel (the original lyric) is appropriate for our ships.”

Flynn added that the charitable message would have been lost if the blimp actually displayed the song lyric because the public would have reacted strongly to the use of the word “pimp.”

The young men who devised the campaign flew to Los Angeles on Monday to meet Ice Cube and see his song fulfilled. Michael Lopez, one of the friends, said the campaign’s popularity was a shock to all of them. The momentum grew last week after Ice Cube appeared on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” on Jan. 15 and asked Goodyear to fulfill the campaign.

“We just wanted to pay homage to the music,” Lopez said. “Last summer, we were all sitting back talking about hip-hop and got the idea. We knew (Goodyear) probably wouldn’t say: ‘Ice Cube’s a pimp.’ We just wanted to get across the spirit of the song, which is that it’s a good day.”

Jonathan Zeichner, executive director of A Place Called Home, said the $25,000 donation would be well used.

“A Place Called Home is in the business of creating good days every day for 1,000 kids a year,” Zeichner said. “We’ve worked with 18,000 young people in South-Central Los Angeles over the past 20 years. Just this year, we sent our 263rd young person to college. These opportunities would not exist were it not for people like Ice Cube and people who got up and made a donation online.”

While A Place Called Home members and staffers took a Monday afternoon ride on the blimp, Ice Cube was too busy promoting his movie and said he would return another day for a ride. However, he sat in the blimp’s six-person carriage briefly as it prepared for takeoff.

“We’re gonna roll it,” he joked, as the massive dirigible groaned to life. “I wonder do it got hydraulics? Front and back, side to side.”

Later, as he fielded media questions about the event, he explained that he was glad to share the moment with a charity.

“It makes it not just an ego thing for me to see my name on the blimp,” he said.

If he wrote the song today, would seeing his name on the blimp still symbolize reaching the top of his career? Sure, he said.

“The blimp is the coolest,” Jackson said. “It’s the original, the first, from L.A. I’m an original from L.A.”

Seeing your name on the airship is the ultimate, he explained, because “not only are you having a good day but the world recognizes you’re having a good day.”

via – Daily Breeze.