Underrated Ice Cube track! Vivid storytelling, powerful message, and haunting production. Its arc is:

1. The difficulties of hustling in a big city
2. Traveling somewhere smaller to hustle (what we assume will the summer vacation)
3. Initial success
4. New difficulties
5. A grim ending (revealed to be the actual summer vacation)

Notice that like so many other Ice Cube tracks, it’s narrated through a persona. In tracks like “Alive On Arrival” and “Once Upon the Time in the Projects”, Cube’s character is an innocent type who tries to stay out of trouble but gets caught up in it. Here, he plays the exact type of character who would be an antagonist in either of those songs.

The cumulative effect of these personas is that Cube exposes the listener to a wide swath of experiences. We see many segments of society and varying perspectives—yet they’re all united by common themes. All three of those songs are strongly anti-hustling, for instance. As Ice Cube has said in a few interviews, for a story to be about dealing drugs, it’s not realistic if it doesn’t have a tragic ending. If the ending’s happy, it ended too soon. (For a similar rumination on this topic, see Ice-T’s “Pain”.)