Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Robert Christgau
Entertainment Weekly	A−
Q
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone (2003)
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin	(favorable)
Washington Post	(favorable)

The Predator is the third studio album by Ice Cube. Released within months of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, many songs comment on the racial tensions. The title is in part reference to the movie Predator 2, and the album itself includes samples from the film. Though not Ice Cube's most critically successful album, The Predator is his most commercially successful, reaching 2x platinum status in the United States, also containing his most successful single, "It Was a Good Day." The Predator is his only number one album on the Billboard 200 to date, selling 193,000 copies in its first week. As of 2008 it has sold over 2 million copies in the USA, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

In the opening song, "When Will They Shoot," Ice Cube addressed criticisms of anti-Semitism he received for his last effort, Death Certificate:

Elsewhere "We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up" is directed at the LA Police officers acquitted in the Rodney King trial, an event that ignited the 1992 LA Riots. The similarly themed "Who Got the Camera?" imagines a scenario in which a black man is subjected to police brutality. The songs are broken up by interludes involving interviews with Ice Cube and what appears to be a debate between members of a congregation or talk-show audience.

Although not as lauded as his previous efforts, The Predator was well received. Entertainment Weekly called it "Ice Cube's strongest, most cohesive work yet" (11/20/92, p. 88).Q Magazine included it in its "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s" (12/99, p. 74).Spin Magazine called it a record that "demands to be heard" (1/93, p. 61).

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Wikipedia