how was vanilla ice portrayed by the media?

I eagerly await your critical contortions.

"Rico Suave" did not blow me away, though.

I'd MUCH rather hear 3rd Bass than "Ice Ice Baby," and part of it is an issue of exposure, but it's also the fact that 3rd Bass released some great fucking music - fucking triple layers of darkness and the Gas face. I'm not arguing Ice was wack cuz he was popular, I'm arguing that the song just plain isn't that great.

xpost Shakey OTM

Uh, wha? Chuck said that he heard it on a rap station and that it sounded a bit like N.W.A. to him; neither of these points give Vannila Ice "legitimate hip-hop credentials", and nowhere does he state that they do.

I disagree with this idea myself, whether or not its what Chuck intended....I think that the hip-hop world, (and I don't mean "heads," I mean "the people" who listened predominantly to hip-hop,) largely resented him for blowing up, especially since he sold SO MANY copies, another example of whites benifiting from black musical developments etc.

-- manthony m1cc1o (anthonyisrigh...), September 12th, 2004.

aw, man! i totally wanted to post that!

Indeed?

This post is EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!

In your opinion, 3rd Bass sucks more than Vanilla Ice because they accused V-Ice or Hammer of stealing a record and then looping it while doing the same thing themselves. This is apparently a legitimate criticism of 3rd Bass.

But if I come on here and accuse Vanilla Ice of being "mind-bogglingly stupid" for lying about his background, fronting like he was "street" or other such "authenticity issues" then I'm being rockist.

You can't have it both ways. You want to critique 3rd Bass, talk about their music, not some stupid "they don't like this pop song and said something rockist, therefore are awful!" shit. I think it's entirely natural for them to hate on Vanilla Ice. I wouldn't want a rock critic to take the position of authenticity, because as a critic he should be engaging with music at all levels. Look at it this way; I love R&B, but when Ice Cube says "fuck R&B" it makes me happy because its what I would EXPECT him to say, it's what I WANT to hear him say. He's no critic; he doesn't have to engage with it. He can front on it all he wants, because that's his cultural reality.

I think the Cactus Album is wonderful, not flawless but certainly a great album - production is terrific, it introduced the world to Zev Love X, and the songs are infinitely more listenable than anything on Vanilla Ice's first album (not to mention his subsequent "attempts.") I would consider "Ice Ice Baby" to be an average-to-decent song if it weren't for the fact that I'm entirely exhausted with hearing it spouted ironically by my peers, or requested by sorority sisters at parties. Because really, its an obnoxious song on the whole with not much to recommend it.

I also put on "Triple Stage Darkness" by 3rd Bass. No way does IIB beat this - the beats are catchier and funkier, the sounds more engaging and atmospheric in their layering, the sampled riffs more memorable.

It's all about the hair.

It isn't. There's a small laundry list of things that bug me about this song:

1) Ice sounds like somebody's kid brother rhyming along to a Big Daddy Kane record.

2) You can hear him almost trip up in spots where he tries to cram too many words into one line - he gets short of breath and races to catch up.

3) Every time the beat drops out for the "if there was a problem / yo, I'll solve it" prechorus, Ice's timing goes out the window. The vocal track in general has a very rough-take shakiness to it, like the producer couldn't coax out a better performance out of Ice.

4) The beat programming has dated VERY badly - it sounds like a chain-store Casio keyboard set to "Rock", and not in a good way.

5) The gangsta posturing in the lyrics, which has been better critiqued upthread.

6) There's no cutting or scratching anywhere on the record, so why the repeated references to a DJ?

If you can find it, grab a copy of "Rok One's Crazy", in which Rok One manages to both spoof and eulogize "Ice Ice Baby" - tighter delivery, better beats, better use of the Queen / Bowie sample. It's like the record Ice wanted to make all along.

I also put on "Triple Stage Darkness" by 3rd Bass. No way does IIB beat this - the beats are catchier and funkier, the sounds more engaging and atmospheric in their layering, the sampled riffs more memorable.

Yeah, 3rd Bass, no contest. I still bust out "Derelicts Of Dialect" on occasion.

I understand you think he fails splendidly, that his so called "technical shortcomings" are part of its appeal, but to me they are just a large part of what contributes to the song's dull, grating sound. Plus as someone pointed it, it's far too long.

Actually screw that they didn't sound quirky they had a lot more dimensions to their sound - you can't nail it down with one term because "The Cactus Album" is a diverse effort that goes from the Aretha sampling goofiness and racial politix of "Gas Fas" the aggressive funk of triple stage darkness.

Yes, exactly - thank you. There ARE songs that I love despite / because of technical shortcomings (Trax Records' entire back catalog to thread), but "Ice Ice Baby" isn't one of them.

But in Vanilla Ice's case, his shortcomings give the whole record the obnoxious mood of a cipher attempting to be down and failing, not splendidly, but miserably.

OTfreakin'M.

Vanilla's only legacy is that he got a bunch of white kids interested in rap, many of whom did get move on to the more "legit" (quotations intentional) stuff. I was 16 when "Ice, Ice Baby" hit, and was already well into Rakim, KRS-One, Paris, etc. by that time, so Vanilla Ice just didn't do a thing for me.