Saturday 2 December 2023

The Ice Is Right

Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby (live)
(From Top Of The Pops TV show; 1990)



Say what you want about Vanilla Ice, but this clip of him performing live on British TV proves he could rhyme and dance at the SAME DAMN TIME! It's a performance every bit as good as 3rd Bass doing The Gas Face on Arsenio Hall's show, and it lends credence to my theory that the real reason MC Serch hated Vanilla Ice was because Ice was a far better dancer than him (plus Ice had a better flat-top hairdoo.) There's nowt more pathetic than a white boi rapper who turnt green with jealousy.

In hindsight, I probably should have included Ice Ice Baby in my One Song Wonders™ list. The thing about Ice Ice Baby is that everybody liked the song when it first dropped. And why wouldn't we? That shit was/is a legitimately great Rap single where a Zack Morris-type saltine with an aerodynamic flat-top borrowed the High Rollers flow to spray arrogance over the Under Pressure intro. And for that we should be thankful because only ur dad could possibly prefer Freddie Mercury & David Bowie's singing to Vanilla Ice's rhyming. It's this simple: other than Trevor Horn & Anne Dudley, Pink Floyd, Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel's So album, one Yes single, three Kate Bush singles and one Bowie single, the English middle classes have always made embarrassingly bad music. The rest of them should have sodded off back to drama school.

One point I will concede about Ice Ice Baby is that most of the graffiti in the video is pure toy-town shite. That's some "never forgive action" since Goldie was living in Miami at the time and was regularly joined by his New York writer m8s like Brim and T-Kid.

15 comments:

  1. Gotta respect Doom’s professionalism for keeping his composure during Serch’s dancing.

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  2. Never forget Serch's very awkward attempt at a Karate Kid crane kick in Kurious' Benetton video 😂

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  3. learning to love ice ice baby for what it is/was is part of growing up! lol

    i gotta know which bowie and kate bush singles u like...

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  4. Xanax, for Kate Bush it's Hounds Of Love, Running Up That Hill and Babooshka. For David Bowie it's obvs Fame. I'm one of those guys who hears the opening of Let's Dance only to find myself crushed by disappointment when Bowie's voice appears instead of Puffy & Mase.

    Johnny, it was a relief that the tracks Khayree gave Vanilla Ice were all wack. Khayree clearly kept all his best music for Mac Dre and The MAC.

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  5. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself arguing that Vanilla Ice wasn't really all that bad after all.

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  6. i knewwwww you were a "fame" head! lol

    interesting kate bush picks idk if i really know "babooshka," her song with prince is pretty sick tho https://youtu.be/B3j4pgqdwNA?si=_3nHScHv6ZGzjg7e

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  7. The battle between Vanilla Ice and Willie D is one of the more surreal 80s rap myths; real or not.

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  8. Did Willie Dee get waxed like a candle? We'll never know.

    Xanax, I'd not heard that before. Pretty good - but I'm gonna attribute that to Prince 😉

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  9. First off khayree beat for “hooked” is #actually dope imho

    We can also thank “ice ice baby” for inspiring Pharrell’s direction to fabolous to use that same flow on “holla back young’n”

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  10. We can indeed. It was me who brought that info to the internet. Still waiting on the actual audio from Westwood to turn up online tho.

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  11. Interesting Khayree produced for Vanilla Ice was that one of his earliest placements?

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  12. Early-ish. In the late 80s he did the first EPs by The MAC and Mac Dre, plus some R&B stuff for Club Noveau and New Choice.

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  13. When Vanilla used to battle at Wrangler they used to let him win few rounds so he could get to the final so Willie d could royally beat his ass.
    didn't like the song when it came out so not really everybody liked it, stop with the revisionism.

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  14. I don't believe you. If you were in high school in 1990, you fux wid Ice Ice Baby when you first heard it.

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