There are really two Ice Cubes. There is today’s Ice Cube: rapper, actor, executive producer, and production studio owner. And then there is the furious, Kalashnikov-toting iconoclast of two decades ago, whose existence was acknowledged by 2006’s Cube as predating the birth of many among the sweaty throng at the 9:30 Club. I couldn’t help but feel sheepish at that point, realizing that while I was playing with blocks and smearing apple sauce all over my face at the tail end of the 80s, this man, who was only a couple of feet before me, had not only proved himself as one of the greatest rappers of all time, but had taken part in founding one of the seminal epochs of American music history: Gangsta Rap.

Humbling as that was, it did seem odd to me that these two men could be one. For an artist who had both spent an enormously prominent portion of his career spitting lyrical vitriol against the perceived threats of “AmeriKKKa” to be producing and starring in a forthcoming “Welcome Back, Kotter” remake seemed a little hard to reconcile; I can only imagine what 1986’s Ice Cube might think of 2006’s. But creative dichotomies notwithstanding, any fear that the artist Ice Cube is now has in any way faded or betrayed the artist he was twenty years ago were refuted by Sunday’s thrilling, raucous performance.