Ice-T

Certain Songs #673: Ice-T – “Midnight”

October 18, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: O.G. Original Gangster
Year: 1991

When Ice-T went big, he went utterly massive.

And perhaps his most massive jam was the probably-not-completely-apocryphal “Midnight,” an utterly riveting travelog centering on a skirmish in the gang wars that he often chronicled.

“Midnight” was also one of his more successful rap/metal fusions — I never really liked Body Count, his out-and-out thrash band — welding the doomy riff of Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” to John Bonham’s crazy stupid fly slamming beat from “When The Levee Breaks.”

Certain Songs #672: Ice-T – “You Played Yourself”

October 17, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech…Just Watch What You Say
Year: 1990

Maybe it’s a West Coast thing, but I liked Ice-T from the moment I heard him rap the theme to Colors. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing I remember from Colors.

But in a genre where authenticity danced with bullshit, he always seemed — from my vantage point as a privileged white dude — simultaneously more authentic and a bigger bullshit artist.