nydailynews.com– Ice Cube’s story creates that rare moment when you wish VH1‘s “Behind the Music” could be expanded from an hour into a miniseries.

The former O’Shea Jackson is one of the most intriguing characters from the fascinating world of hip hop, and you know the producers here had to leave all kinds of great stuff on the cutting-room floor.

Here’s a guy, after all, who was once the poster image for everything mainstream America feared and loathed about rap music and rappers.

Today, you’d hardly find a better model for the American Dream. Long, stable marriage. Four kids. Star of music and movies, big enough so he can almost call his own shots.

And he’s still just 42.

Dang! How’d he do that?

“Behind the Music” gives a good overview, with comments from Ice Cube and pals like Dr. Dre. But this is a big pond and an hour barely covers the surface.

We’d love to know more, for instance, about the bitter battle with manager Jerry Heller that led Ice Cube to split in 1989 from his first major group, NWA.

In the broader picture, we want more details on how anyone goes from gangsta rap to creating some of the most successful “urban family movies” of the last decade.

How does one person simultaneously sell himself as hard-core and also soft and fuzzy?

That’s the answer we’d really like. But it’s an essay question, and “Behind the Music” simply runs out of time before it can give us the whole picture.

What “Behind the Music” does make clear is what anyone who has ever talked with Ice Cube knows: He’s smart. Really smart. Like his pal Dr. Dre, or another pal, Chuck D, he knows where he wants to go and figures out how to get there.

Cube, Dre, the late Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella formed the original NWA in the late 1980s. Along with Public Enemy, they took hip hop to new places because it sounded as if they truly didn’t care what anybody thought. They were just going to spit it out.

Ice Cube’s first solo records were just as hard, and just as good. “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted” remains one of the best hip-hop albums ever.

Yet at the same time, he didn’t get the memo that he was now supposed to be labeled “gangsta rapper” forever. He broke into acting with “Boyz N the Hood,” then created his own movie franchises: the “Friday” series, the “Barbershop” series, the “Are We There Yet?” comedies.

He doesn’t analyze all this. He just says he wanted to do it, he worked hard to get it done and he wakes up every morning trying to get better.

It’s the American Dream. Now we just need a sequel.