TS: Ice Cube vs Ice-T

from my limited knowledge, i'm going with cube. o.g. has two stellar tracks. home of the bodybag is a great intro - very stream-of-consciousness the way he just reels of loosely connected words and phrases. it's interesting. plus i like "mind over matter" a lot - the rest doesn't thrill me much.

"amerikkkas" is incredible. very funny record - love "you can't fade me" the most (absolutely horiffic, but makes me chuckle, and you find yourself rooting for cube). but the album is basically one long piece of music - loads of short, noisy, fuzzy snippets strung together into one whole. really powerful delivery. i shall get a couple more cube albums soon.

ice-t had some entertaining songs, and i used to own body count (with "cop killer," even). i like him on "law & order svu," though more b/c i'm always imagining him laughing up his sleeve at being a TV detective after "cop killer."

(Who Would Tim Dog Choose?)

Ice Cube had Da Lench Mob.

This is really yough T/S; I completely love "Power" and "The Iceberg", but agree with a lot of whats been set about "The Predator", which is it is a much better and complete piece of art than anythinb Ice-T has done: politically and sonically.

However, who's funnier? Ice-motherfuckin'-T.

I've decided: Ice-T

OTM!!

(i think the cachet of truckstop waitresses might just have jumped a bit)

come on, darlene is a great name. Plus Darlene was the coolest character in Roseanne.

And he takes such glee in it! There's the gap after the album ends, then his Bootsy-esque "oh yeah - it ain't over, motherfuckers" before Message To B.A. fades in, the lame collage of faked criticisms from Efil4zaggin - he gives them their head, lets it run for a while then starts sneering the same words over the original's "Here's what they think about you," his voice brimming with confidence and contempt compared to Dre's playground taunts. Then starts dropping in his own, genuine, samples of voices criticising the Cube-less NWA, lets that build to a pitch and drop out before that awesome, juicy beat - the best on the album, and that's saying something - rolls in and he revels, "Goddamn, I'm glad y'all set it off!" And it's true - he took the high road (er, at least on this topic) on his first two solos, but now he's audibly overjoyed to tear their snipes apart.

In that, it's a contender for top ten answer records, too. "I kept on stomping/While y'all motherfuckers moved straight outta Compton", and especially snapping back on 100 Miles & Runnin's blustering "Started out with too much cargo/So I'm glad we got rid of Benedict Arnold" with the direct and irrefutable "Started out with too much cargo/Dropped four niggas, now I'm making all the dough." The song takes a lot of its strength from sticking to this theme for most of its content - when he left the group, he said it was because the money wasn't right. In this record, he abuses those responsible and scolds the others for not looking after themselves. And just a few months later, the group indeed split up over these very issues - well spotted, Mr Jackson. (It's also great the way he rhymes "Gang-banged by your manager feller/Gettin' money out your ass like a motherfuckin' Rediteller" without ever bothering to say "Jerry Heller" out loud.)

The attention to each target is also notable. Eazy gets a full verse to be excoriated for ripping off the others (and paying 10 grand to have dinner with Bush!), and warned that the same fate is going to happen to him, Ren gets a full verse for Cube to express his disappointment at the dissolution of their personal friendship through professional mijudgement, and DJ Yella is dismissed in one line! (The follow-up to it, incidentally, is a great example of one of Cube's stylistic tricks of the time - forcing scansion via empty vocal beats in order to emphasise a line: "Yella boy's on your team so you're losin'/Yo Dre --- stick to producin'!") And I actually like Dre as a rapper - Express Yourself is fine by me, apart from overplay on local radio in the early '90s, and his verses on California Love and No Diggity make those tracks much greater than they would otherwise be - but to accuse him of biting Cube's style while trying to fill his place in the group is a canny psychological move. "You got jealous when I got my own company" also struck a nerve, obviously - if only Dre had paid better attention to the warnings about who you let in your pockets...

And the production throughout just underlines the ferocity of the attack. He obviously studied well when working with the Bomb Squad on Amerikkka's Most Wanted, here pointing up particular lines or phrases by meshing an extra flourish, squall of noise or vocal sample into the density of sound underneath them. Or dropping most everything out for a line like "Eazy's dick is smelling like MC Ren's shit" - it's an old and obvious trick, but there's so much going on in the backing track that the real impact comes when it rolls back in. And that single scratched bass drum under the multi-tracked vocals of "I'd never have dinner with the President/I'd never have dinner with the President/I'D NEVER HAVE DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT..."

When I was 17, the homophobic tone of the broomstick, vaseline and rape references put me really, really strongly off. But coming back to it recently, I a) take comfort from the fact that they're all metaphorical and b) don't really care anymore anyway - I've come to terms with slackness in my entertainment. But more than that, it was like I hadn't skipped listening to it for 12 years (!) - most of the lyrics and rhythms had actually stayed with me through that whole time. If someone can name another record so passionate, thought-through and well-constructed that it can have that kind of impact, please do so! I would seriously love to hear it.

And as for 'Amerikkka's..' and DC, just got them both and I'm knocked out. I thought nothing in rap could beat the impact of 'Fear of a Black Planet' when I first heard it, but this comes mighty close. Why are these albums never atop the periodical lists of all-time greatest hip-hop LPs?

Oh, yeah: Ice Cube easily, for his first three LPs and his NWA contributions. Altho I do admire Ice T, and he briefly won my heart back in '91 by praising Motorhead and dissing Bon Jovi.

'd venture to say that Straight Outta Compton is about 1/3 a good album: title cut, gangsta, fuck tha police, and dopeman. the rest blows, including express yrself.

OTM!!

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:40 AM bookmarkflaglink

FPing 15 year old posts, classic or dud?

but in all seriousness, though, being a naive kid growing up in a quiet, predominately white suburban neighborhood, sheltered from a lot of what was going on in the outside world, Cube's cds were some of the first exposure I had to some of the ideas expressed on the disc. actually inspired me to expand my worldview beyond what I'd known at the time (at age 18).

Ice-T did more for me in Body Count, though I love his rap albums too.