Actor O'Shea Jackson doesn't mind being considered a 'nepo baby;' his father's name and success have opened doors for him.
The entertainer was on a recent episode of Da Get Got Pod with Marshawn Lynch & Mike Robinson, and denied having to "fight" the term. Jackson, 34, is the oldest child of Ice Cube and his wife, Kimberly Woodruff.
"I recommend it for everybody. You not about to make me feel
bad about that, bro," Jackson said, as visible in the clip below. "My dad works hard, you know? My dad loved me. I'm sorry that it didn't work out the same way for you."
The actor added that being called a "nepo baby" seems to be a "dig," but it's impossible to make him "feel bad" about it.
"I will say being a second generation, as far as in a life of wealth, a lot of your fire and a lot of your drive got to be internal," Jackson continued.
"The things that my father had to deal with, that's an external flame and that will help a lot of us get out of situations," he added.
Jackson also recounted leaving the University of Southern California in his second year to portray his father in 2015 N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. The role took two years for him to land.
"So that mean I'm at home watching all my friends graduate without me on Instagram," he said. "That's fear. They hitting me like, 'Yo, so what's going on
with the movie?' And I'm like, 'I don't know.' That's fear.
"My siblings depended on me to get it done. My cousins depended on me to get it done to put our family's name in entertainment forever through this film. ... This is gasoline to my fire. And then once I did it, I still got people questioning me? So now that's even more. So, yeah, I feed off that hate."
Elsewhere in the interview, Jackson said that for the initial two weeks of filming, he felt "nervous" and "awkward," and sought positive feedback from director F. Gary Gray.
Earlier this year, Jackson recalled on Sway's Universe that Gray thought him being considered for the role of Cube was a "joke."
"He didn't tell me during that 'cause [my father] knew that would have just pissed me off," Jackson said. "But it's just little things that I had to use to build my fire."
