Ice T - Gangsta Rap Review
Posted by Evocator Manes on 11.20.2006
2006: The year of Ice T's return to the music world...
Ice T Gangsta Rap
2006
Melee
7.0
Along with the return of Body Count, who has been releasing a slug of DVDs but no studio albums until this year's somewhat wretched Murder 4 Hire, which also shares the same title as a DVD, 2006 has also seen the return of Ice T as rap artist. Even with his other "acting" gigs and his foray into metal-ish sounds with Body Count, Ice T has been most successful artistically as a rapper. All of his rap albums have been good to excellent and even the last one, Seven Deadly Sins, though not up to his usual proficiency, was far from a bad album...
That doesn't change with this album, though someone forgot to tell Ice that gangsta rap is nothing more than a passing fad. Hip-hop/rap is well beyond that phase now and shows no signs of ever going back. Ice may have been one of the primary inventors, or even THE primary inventor, but that point is largely moot. The hardcore rap, the "crime rhyme", that shit is dead. Onyx is still around, but so far under the radar no one is noticing if they drop new albums or not. Same with the Geto Boys. Snoop Dogg is more of a punchline to a joke hastily scribbled on the bottom of an arrest form than anything else. It's especially telling when one of the biggest of the bigs, Ice Cube, basically had to create a record label to drop his new disc. It seems Ice T had to do the same, which makes this more a vanity project than anything else.
Taking a look at the front cover, which features Ice and his current squeeze, Coco, in apparently some kind of post-coital pose, that appears more than ever to be the case. Seeing an aged rapper with a hyper-tanned, busty, blonde trophy is out of line. There will NEVER be a good reason to see a 48 year old rap star nude on the front cover of an album's booklet, no matter how good of shape he thinks he's in. Inside is an ad for Coco's 2007 "exotic" calendar, furthering the whole "vanity project" thing...
Musically, this also follows some of the territory covered by Ice Cube earlier this year, again with the whole "back in the day" reminiscence about wasting songs talking about how they remembered the early days of rap. Not answered is the inherent question of WHO THE FUCK CARES? These tracks and bullshit about their mommas and dead homies were played out a decade ago. Just stop that shit. Production-wise, Ice has managed to update that somewhat. He is far more current here than on the Body Count album, that sounded as if it was going several steps backward.
Ice T, as rapper, has always had a certain amount of storytelling to his raps, which is one of the things both setting him apart and raising him above the level of many of his contemporaries. Many of his songs are now with the "Ice T the pimp" motif, but there are plenty in there also with "Ice T the gang-banger/criminal". After 24 years, does Ice really have anything to say? Nothing in there anywhere about "Ice T the actor"? Even though he does it very well, on both this album and the Body Count disc, every time Ice T starts bitching about how hard his life is, a big part of me wants to find a kettleball and hurl it at the stereo unit. How is anyone going to take that shit seriously? Is there anyone who hears this actually believing Ice T is down and out and living on the streets hands to mouth? No and he has not been in that position for years and years. Unless and until he is, and this goes for the other rappers that do this to, they really need to shut the fuck up about that shit, no matter how well they rap it. While I'm at it, stop with the goddamn "please believe me" noise (that phrase appears about 50 million times on this disc). If they don't believe you now, they're never gonna and if it's that big of a fucking deal, change the goddamn message to something believable.
As for artwork, there are a few beefcakes shots of Ice, credits, the aforementioned Coco cheesecake shots and a special message from Ice on the back page of the 6 page booklet. This is a very minimalistic booklet, like nearly all rap releases seem to be lately. Basically, more of the same.
The 411: Is Ice T still relevant as a musical artist? This CD, like the Body Count disc before it, actually
raises more doubt as to the affirmative answer to this question than it definitively answers. Ice can still
flow and still raps about the same old shit, aside from throwing in a few songs for his woman here and
there (including her vocal appearance on a couple songs), which is relatively new for him. His voice
definitely has not been tested by the acting work he's spent the last several years doing, but the rap
game more and more is leaving him behind. This disc is right around the same quality level as Seven
Deadly Sins, an album that just did not hit, much like this one does and will not. Recommended for
fans only.
