Is it too late to give a Pulitzer to Murk Avenue's Donovan Strain? Because if figuring out the exact day on which Ice Cube had a good day (as described in his 1993 classic "It Was a Good Day") isn't Pulitzer-worthy, I don't know what is.

Strain's intense investigation into Cube's good day mostly focused on the track's lyrics: he knew, for example, that the good day had to come between August 6th, 1988 (the first airdate of Yo! MTV Raps, which Cube watches with Short Dog) and February 23, 1993, when the song was released. He further narrowed it down by finding days when the Lakers beat the Super Sonics, further filtered by "clear days with no smog" and the time period in which beepers were available to the public.

The results:

The ONLY day where:

Yo MTV Raps was on air

It was a clear and smogless day

Beepers were commercially sold

Lakers beat the SuperSonics

and Ice Cube had no events to attend was… JANUARY 20 1992

There you have it, folks. We only wish we'd known in time for the 20th anniversary.

Update: Our cousins at Deadspin are fact-checking Strain's work and have found some (possible) discrepancies. Nothing convincing so far, but we'll update if there's trouble.

[Murk Avenue]