POP MUSIC : It’s a Wrap : Ice Cube has moved into the movie business with--get ready--a comedy. But the defiant rapper hasn’t lost his edge--he’s just gone straight outta Hollywood.

Ice Cube’s scowl is as famous as his music.

The look--suspicious, defiant, intimidating--has caught the eye of mainstream America on album covers and movie screens, where his roles have included the troubled Doughboy in John Singleton’s “Boyz N the Hood.”

Ice Cube’s scowl is such an effective trademark that some pop cynics have wisecracked that he must practice it daily in front of a mirror the way, say, Sylvester Stallone spends hours in the gym keeping his physique pumped.

When the controversial rapper’s own movie arrives Wednesday in 700 theaters across the country, the doubters may think that they have proof that Ice Cube’s persona and angry rap music were the products of shrewd commercial calculation.

“Friday,” the $2.3-million New Line Cinema release that Ice Cube co-wrote and co-produced, isn’t another tale of tragedy a la “Boyz” or the Hughes brothers’ “Menace II Society.”

It’s a comedy: a day in the life of two buddies, one of whom (Cube) has just been fired from his job and the other of whom (Chris Tucker from “House Party 3”) is being hounded by a threatening drug dealer named Big Worm.

The question of the day: Is the switch from the starkness of “Boyz” to the joviality of “Friday” a sign that the rap superstar has gone soft in search of a wider audience?

Ice Cube scowls when the question is raised.

“You have to remember you just have two hours to make a movie,” says the 25-year-old artist, dismissing the charge as he sits in a chair in the Encino offices of his record production company, Lench Mob. “You have to focus on a particular story. ‘Hood’ and ‘Menace II Society’ were one way to look at South-Central in two hours. ‘Friday’ is another way.

“When (musical cohort D.J. Pooh) and I started writing, we figured we’d do a movie that our homeboys would like because that’s what I have always done on record. If you hit that audience, other people will also appreciate it because they can see that it comes from the heart.

In “Friday,” Cube and Pooh set the humor against a backdrop of edgy, neighborhood tension. They drew on their experiences plus the tone of the comedies they had enjoyed through the years--from the lunacy of the old Cheech & Chong movies to such early Eddie Murphy hits as “Beverly Hills Cop.”

“The thing most people outside the neighborhood don’t realize is just how unpredictable South-Central is,” Cube says, more relaxed. “You can go out some days and it’ll look like any suburb in America--blue skies, birds singing, kids playing. But next time you go out, you might see police lights down the street because somebody got shot. The truth is you have more days where you see the sun, but when those other days come, they make you forget about all the nice days.”

Outside the rap world, people often confuse Ice Cube with Ice-T. They’re both controversial rappers who have been accused in the past of encouraging violence against law enforcement officers through their angry lyrics. They’re both actors, even appearing together as villains in Walter Hill’s “Trespass.” They’re also both articulate men who are frequently quoted in media surveys of rap and youth.

Ice Cube, however, is the more compelling artist. The most talented rapper of his generation, he offers the most striking blend of charisma and rapping skills of anyone since Public Enemy’s Chuck D in his late-’80s peak.

Born O’Shea Jackson, Ice Cube grew up with an older brother and two sisters near Washington High School in South-Central Los Angeles. His mother and father worked in maintenance and gardening, respectively, at UCLA.

Cube was practical enough as a teen-ager to study drafting at a trade school until rap started paying off. He was still in his teens in the late ‘80s when he joined N.W.A. and wrote the song, “F--- Tha Police,” that helped put gangsta rap on the map.

After leaving the group in 1989 in a dispute over money, Cube made two of the most explosive rap albums ever--”AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted” (1990) and “Kill at Will” (1991)--angry, accusatory records that decried social conditions in South-Central.

Despite his longtime love of movies, Cube’s move into film was largely an accident. He was on the set of the old Arsenio Hall TV show one day when a budding young director approached him and said he’d like to cast Cube in an upcoming movie. The director was John Singleton.

Cube was a natural for films. His raps are filled with compelling cinematic detail, and he commands attention on- and offstage.

Pat Charbonnet, a former publicist who has been Cube’s manager since 1989, saw the potential in the young rapper in 1988 when she was hired by Priority Records to publicize the fledging N.W.A.

“Cube stood out immediately,” she says. “When you are trying to get publicity for an unknown group, you are always looking for the person in the group who has got good quotes and stuff--and that was Cube. He was a great, natural storyteller with a tremendous presence onstage.”

Michael Gruber, a vice president at the William Morris Agency who is Cube’s agent, says he too saw his client as a multimedia star from the beginning. Despite rap’s unruly, outlaw image, Gruber had little trouble interesting filmmakers in Cube.

“This is a guy who takes his business very, very seriously,” Gruber says. “He shows up for meetings on time. He has the story and a pitch in his mind. He deals with people respectfully. I think he is a very smart entrepreneur who looks at the future.”

Ice Cube is so identified with the tensions of the street that it’s surprising to see him hanging out, in his jeans and T-shirt, in a Ventura Boulevard office building housed mostly by attorneys and accountants. He chose this location because it is close to a home he owns in Tarzana and away from the hustle and bustle of the Hollywood and West Los Angeles show-biz corridors.

Despite the trademark scowl, Cube comes across in interviews as open and unfailingly polite. Anyone who passes him in the hall is likely to be greeted by a smile.

His sensitive side surfaced in “It Was a Good Day,” a 1993 single describing a daydream in which everything goes right for 24 hours: “Nobody I know got killed in South-Central L.A. / Today was a good day.”

Cube, who also shares an office in the Crenshaw area with manager Charbonnet, says he couldn’t have written that single in the early days, because he was so focused on the negative things around him.

“I think I have become a more intelligent person, a person who can look at things from different ways just because I’ve seen the world more,” he says when asked about the single. “I haven’t lost the anger, but I now try to understand the reasons for the anger. In the beginning, I was (lashing out) at the forces that were holding you down. Now I am trying to understand why those forces exist and what to do about them.”

Cube has been in love with the movies since age 8, when he saw a hard-boiled double bill of “The Mack” and “Coffy” at the Century Drive-In with his mother and his brother.

“I enjoy movies that I can relate to,” he says in his office, which is crowded with stereo equipment and promotional posters. “I am not a movie freak insofar as sitting down and just watching any movie. I don’t really like the old black-and-white movies. I like action and comedy.”

A list of his favorite films includes the gangster archetypes “Scarface” and “The Godfather” as well as “American Me,” a 1992 movie about East L.A. gang wars starring Edward James Olmos. The common denominator in these films, he says, is the search for power, money and respect.

Cube has just finished writing a script that touches on these themes. Charbonnet calls the script “vintage Ice Cube--his rap lyrics condensed into a screen play.”

Asked about how he avoided the outlaw lifestyle chronicled in so many gangsta rap songs, Cube pauses.

“Like any kid, I wanted money and power too, but I just saw they weren’t getting that (through gangs and crime),” he says, finally. “Everything they would get, it would be over so quick. None of it lasted, and too many of them were getting killed. If you have a kettle on the stove and you tell me it’s hot, if I touch it I’m a fool.”

Cube started writing “Friday” in the spring of 1993 while he was on tour in Europe.

“I had my laptop, and I started talking to Pooh about all the comedy in the neighborhood,” he says. “There’s always something going on if you look for it. A friend was telling me the other day about these guys he knew who robbed a bank with some of his homeboys.

“They were driving away and they couldn’t help but open the bag to see the money. They got so excited seeing all that money that they had an accident. The police came and arrested them.”

Frustrated by all the months that another of his scripts spent stuck “in development” at a major studio, Cube and Charbonnet decided in 1993 to finance “Friday” independently. But New Line Cinema stepped forward and supplied the money with no strings attached.

Directed by F. Gary Gray (who has directed music videos for Cube and Cypress Hill), “Friday” was shot in 20 days on location near 120th Street and Normandie Avenue in Los Angeles.

Michael DeLuca, president of production at New Line Cinema, sees the film as a throwback to the Cheech & Chong comedies. “Ice Cube is someone who knows what he likes and is in touch with his audience,” he says. “I think (the film) is cool because he pulls no punches. It’s raunchy and fun.

It’s hard sometimes for Cube to realize that six years have passed since N.W.A. revolutionized the pop-rap world with “Straight Outta Compton,” an album that opened the doors for West Coast rap.

“People say we thought ‘F--- Tha Police’ was this attempt to shock everybody, but that is a line that has been around the neighborhood ever since there has been neighborhoods and there was police,” Cube recalls.

Despite his much-publicized feud with N.W.A., the young rapper says feelings have been smoothed out. He even made up with N.W.A. founder Eric (Eazy-E) Wright, who died last month of complications of AIDS.

“All that (trouble) was over a long time ago,” he says softly. “I started looking at Eazy-E as a friend again probably by the end of ‘92, the start of ’93. I saw him four weeks (before he died) in New York at a party. We talked until everybody had left the place. There was no sign he was sick, not one bit.”

Between touring and putting together his next film, Cube plans to get together with red-hot producer and former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre to finally make the highly anticipated joint album that they’ve already titled “Helter Skelter.”

One of the reasons for Cube’s tireless schedule (running his own record label, directing videos and producing records for other acts) is his desire to provide for his family. Cube and his wife, Kim, have two sons and a daughter.

“They’ve brought definite meaning to my life,” he says, looking through the office window at the bright afternoon sunshine. “I’ve become more mature because of them. I want (to create) something to pass on to my children, so they can run with it. My hope is nobody with my blood will have to worry about money. That’s what I’m trying to establish.”