Commitment To Excellence: Ice Cube's Top 5 L.A. Raiders

Image via Complex Original

These days, the Oakland Raiders are a joke, but back in the early '80s, the Los Angeles Raiders were anything but. A team of genuine badasses, they won Super Bowl XVIII in 1984 (embarrassing the Washington Redskins 38-9), and inspired the generation that revolutionized West Coast rap. One member of that generation, rapper-turnt-actor-turnt-director-re-turnt rapper Ice Cube, debuted his latest movie on ESPN last night, a documentary in the network's "30 for 30" series on the Raiders in the City of Angels called Straight Outta L.A. We recently got with Cube to talk about his favorite members of the Silver and Black during their tenure in his hometown.

Cube Says: "Drafted by the LA Raiders, USC boy wonder, Heisman Trophy winner and just, to me, the upper echelon when it came to running backs. He was in the same category to me as OJ Simpson and Walter Payton. In the 80

Cube Says: "He was a winner. You know people counted him out. He was kind of a journeyman in the league and then the Raiders gave him a shot; people thought he wasn

Cube Says: "He was a tough guy. I would have never thought he came from Villanova with that attitude. [Laughs.] He came putting it down on that front line and was instantly a star in L.A. That team represented the kind of L.A. that I came from. It wasn

Cube Says: "I don

Cube Says: "He had that style that reminded me of a Hollywood Henderson—really in Hollywood, though, not in Dallas. He wasn