Robert Christgau of MSN Music gave the album "A-", saying "it leads with two of hip-hop's great anti-moralizing sermons, the Snoop- and Lil Jon-powered "Go to Church" and the grinder's credo "A Bird in the Hand", then proceeds to his greatest song, the fact-filled paraplegic memoir "Ghetto Vet". It closes with "Dead Homiez" and "Cold Places", two distinct and convincing arguments for keeping ya head up and ya ass off the street".[2]AllMusic's David Jeffries considered it a "big blunder" to have "Cold Pieces" instead of "the superior 'Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It'" and the absence of "Bop Gun", but found that the "release dates are shuffled into a running order that makes sense" and called Soren Baker's essay "informed and insightful".[1] Ian Cohen of Pitchfork resumed: "against the odds, the latest Ice Cube career comp mostly succeeds in balancing his MTV hits with the trenchant deep cuts that actually made him essential in the first place".[3]
In his mixed review, Mike Joseph of PopMatters saw the album as "a horrible introduction if you're being introduced to Ice Cube for the first time, but it's hard to give a thumbs-up to an album that calls itself The Essentials when there's so much essential material missing".[4] Steve 'Flash' Juon of RapReviews gave the album a derogatory 0 out of ten score, summing up with: "absolutely not essential. Important songs missing, unimportant songs included".[5]
^The original versions of "Why We Thugs" and "Smoke Some Weed" (with respective credits) are taken from the Lench Mob Records release Laugh Now, Cry Later, while the medley was recorded live at Metro City, Perth, Western Australia
