Here's something that probably wasn't on most people's media bingo cards: Tucker Carlson has come up with a new 12-minute segment on his Twitter show...touring South Central Los Angeles with rap star Ice Cube, of all people:

Ep. 10 Stay in your lane: our drive through South Central LA with Ice Cube.

(next episode: Ice Cube sits down with us at his studio) pic.twitter.com/cUgCh2xccH

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 25, 2023

It's a fascinating glimpse into a world most conservatives never see, and we find that we like Ice Cube, an immensely successful rapper, whose scowling visage in his youth with a rap group called N.W.A. (don't ask) gave us a very different impression.

It's also pretty innovative storytelling.  Did we ever see Tucker do anything like this when he was at Fox News?  It's as if being free of Fox News has freed him to explore new frontiers in journalism, talking to people perceived to be on the other side.

Tucker tours Ice Cube's home neighborhood, South Central Los Angeles, and it's news to viewers there, too.  Yes, it's a little scruffy and run down, but only a little — it's actually a pretty decent-looking older neighborhood, with pre-mid-century-modern single-family homes, giant palm promenades (and one thing they didn't show, but I know about: huge jacaranda promenades full of gorgeous purple-flowered trees) and regular black people.  It's not the wreckage and rubble of the homeless on Skid Row and beyond, and it's not a place of turmoil and riots.  They probably could have shown more, but were limited by what was visible from the car window and its intriguing glass sun roof, which reflected palms from above.

The conversation was interesting, too.  Tucker was pretty much at ease, but not completely so, kind of sucking up to his guest at times, as if to ensure he would not to make him mad, maybe meeting him for the first time and scoping him out, and Ice Cube, who was a bit measured and circumspect in what he said, didn't get into anything leftish.  Each tried to find commonalities with the other, as if to find reasons to be friends.  Tucker asked Ice Cube about the graveyard they passed and the people he knew who were buried there — without getting into the most likely reason for it, which was gang violence.  It was just skirting the matter.

Tucker also asked about why Ice Cube chose not to get the COVID vaccine, which involved giving up a $9-million television contract, and Ice Cube said it was to be a good example to his children (his priority seemed to be keeping his kids from taking it) and expressed skepticism at the rushed speed at which the mRNA vaccine was developed as his reason for holding off, which was a reasonable position (the news about young Bronny James going into cardiac arrest after taking the vaccine, just a couple miles north at USC, hadn't hit, but we know he'd probably have thoughts on that).  It was very different from the reasons others in the rapper community, such as Nicki Minaj, had expressed for resisting the vaccine, about fearing loss of sexual prowess, as some of her relatives had claimed they knew of firsthand, which might have been a more common "street" response.

Yet it was obviously a safe topic for Ice Cube to expound upon, as African-Americans were the top demographic group resisting the vaccine, contrary to what Democrats pushing the vaccine and its mandates believed.  But Tucker didn't get into the numbers; he just wanted to know why Ice Cube didn't want to get the vaccine, and he did get an intelligent answer from him.

There were other parts of the discussion that were eye-openers too.  Ice Cube criticized Black Lives Matter for not helping the black community, criticized corporations for their virtue-signaling, and criticized politicians in general for their connections to special interests, which is a generically acceptable statement, but probably a pretty common sentiment in the inner-city black community, too.

Tucker introduced for us something those of us who don't follow basketball closely: that Ice Cube had begun a rival league of basketball, apparently to help out black young people, probably primarily young black men, to achieve their sports dreams, which sounds like an immensely worthy project, yet which was viewed balefully by the more commercialized NBA, which certainly made them look like corporate creeps.  That was useful to know.

It's important that Tucker does these segments because they don't appear in the mainstream news — a conservative host interviews a likely lefty rap star and finds much in common.  News of that gets out to both communities, and then perceptions change, and political alliances can form, as well as more sensitive less stereotypical speech given that the groups feel they know each other.

It's frankly pushing the envelope of innovative journalism, and it produces knowledge and understanding for all sides that didn't exist before that.

It certainly is on trend, too, given that black voters are leaving Democrats in large numbers in search of political answers that don't involve beating the drum of race-baiting and always being the victim as their sop instead of real achievements in income, education, family life, and standards of living, all of which are denied to them by their Democrat masters.

Obviously, being out at Fox has enabled Tucker to get creative, and he's now running with that.  He's clearly on the cutting edge of journalism now, and we are all richer for it.

Image: Screen shot from Twitter video.