Ice Ice Baby

[koganbot]

Always thought "Under Pressure" was a stone cold bore, but then I don't think I heard it until after I'd heard "Ice Ice Baby," which I love (or strongly like). I think it helped that I originally heard "Ice Ice Baby" when it was first appearing in hip-hop strongholds (major urban markets) but before it hit nationally or the video showed up. So I was hearing this utterly ominous bassline across the chill San Francisco night, and an uninflected voice going "Ice ice baby" in a cold synthesized whisper. It didn't feel cute or energized or pop at all, and was better for this. I paired it in my mind with another Bay Area hit that summer, Paris's "Break The Grip Of Shame," with similar menace from the bass and the barren delivery, the same dark atmosphere. Interestingly, "Break The Grip Of Shame" is a "conscious" black militant rap, a fact I noticed but that wasn't key one way or another to why I liked "Shame" (and I didn't for several umpteen listens even know that Vanilla Ice was white, though I suppose I should have figured it out from his name).

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I'm guessing that "Ice Ice Baby" entered my life in a sonically different manner from how it entered most of yours. And getting it through the radio I was hearing it fit the nightscape rather than concentrating on words or dexterity or anything. But also, for me, still, it works overall as a track, not as a vehicle for a rap. And maybe I tend to listen to music differently from some of you – not that I listen to everything the same, and I can, you know, decide to follow a Charlie Parker solo or hear Louis Armstrong re-order space in a single breath, and be totally taken by a master like Spoonie Gee ruffling across some syllables and digging into others. But I generally am taken by an overall sound, not this or that particular element, which is why the first forty or so times I heard "Ice Ice Baby" I didn't even notice Ice's clumsiness and his falling behind the beat, and these don't strike me as debilitating flaws now, even though I've since been made hyper conscious of them.

(I posted this the other day over on Popular, along with some vintage appraisals by Greil Marcus, Chuck Eddy, and others of "Ice Ice Baby" and "Pop Goes The Weasel.")

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Yes, I hunted down VI's first LP -- not the one I reviewed, which was "To The Extreme" in 1990, but "Hooked", and it's much better, even though it consists of several of the same songs. Better order; less aggravating concept; just better made -- the shittiness of the LP cover "To The Extreme" you have to see to believe. He's not a great rapper but "Hooked" plays with the cartoonishness of his adopted character and limitations in a much defter way, and just sounds better. Obviously he arrived in the UK as a chart-topping package anyway, but I think TTE -- which he these days blames his record company for -- really badly miscues the idea of him, sets it up to seem stupidly and shoddily obnoxious in a way that he sort of wasn't, initially, and he of course went along with a lot of promo stunts and interviews and etc that became quite hard to see past.

[talrose.livejournal.com]

Interesting you're writing about this, since I'm sort of dealing with this right now for my EMP presentation. I was seven or eight when "Ice, Ice Baby" was popular, and it's one of my first memories of music outside of my family's house, i.e. one of the first tracks I was made aware of due to the influence of kids in my class. This and "U Can't Touch This" were the token tracks, and it's impossible for me to extricate it from being very young, so that the sound of the music is informed by whatever my seven-year-old sensibilities were, my characterization would be that I approached "Ice, Ice Baby" the same way I approached toys or video games, the first Nintendo being the system of choice back then.

A year later I would watch "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "So What'cha Want" back-to-back on, of all places, Nickelodeon, and they would have a huge effect on how I ended up listening to music even to this very day. "Ice, Ice Baby" probably does too, but I probably just haven't thought too hard about its power over my taste, since the reaction I had to it was far more passive than the one I had to Nirvana and the Beasties.

[(Anonymous)]

Strange balancing act. You're not a pop elitist because you were completely ignorant of a mainstream Bowie/Queen song, yet you were hip enough to discover "Ice Ice Baby" before it hit mainstream radio.

Also, I believe you can like "So You Want to be a Rock n' Roll Star" and still love The Monkees.

[koganbot]

Not a balancing act. Your words have nothing to do with me, whoever you are.

[koganbot]

That is, taking "hipness" to be a virtue (= knowledge and insight that puts you at a psychological remove from destructive and unjust environments), I can't think of any circumstances where I would consider ignorance hip. And taking not being elite as a virtue (I am in the elite when it comes to articulateness and thoughtfulness regarding music, but let's say that's not what you mean, but rather that I am in opposition to dominant oligarchies), again, unintended ignorance is a cheap method of opposing the elite, and not one I value.