Light up a Blunt and Wax a Chump Like a Candle!
(Re-released from the vaults)
Review by Matthew Webber
Regarding Mind Blowin, Vanilla Ice’s second album (yes, he actually released a post-To the Extreme album; actually, he’s released two and when he’s not slicing pickles he’s recording his third Where Are They Now? disc*), a friend asked me if it was as “good” as his debut.
So I blabbered something like the beats are rather primitive and he’s, like, trying to be a gangsta rapper but he’s white and he has no flow and his lyrics are kind of high school poetry-ish and there aren’t any songs that are catchy enough to be singles, but yeah it’s “good.”
Sadly, with the exception of two songs, the album’s as forgettable as MC Hammer albums after he shortened his name to Hammer and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ albums that don’t include “Come on Eileen.”
But really, it’s not Vanilla Ice’s fault.
Any hardcore Iceman fans/believers or astute watchers of Behind The Music know our hero could actually rap and beatbox. (Remember “Havin’ a Roni”? He can even do that shit live!) But because he was white, his management turned him into a one-hit marionette with the quickest 15 nanoseconds of fame since that “Hey, Mickey, you’re so fine” chick. They draped him in American flags, notched his eyebrows, pompadoured his hair, labeled him the “Elvis of Rap,” cleaned up his lyrics and basically sold him out.
The slap-bracelet wearing set adored him. Anybody else who’d ever listened to real rap acts such as KRS-One and Eric B and Rakim thought he was slightly more real than Milli Vanilli’s live vocals.
Our hero, angry at being discarded like a poopy diaper, rebelled like any repressed child whose parents burned his Twisted Sister albums and would only allow him to listen to Stryper would do: he started smoking weed, ignored the Adam Duritz Postulate (white guys never look good with dreadlocks) and started rapping about dropping bombs on other MCs.
The result is Mind Blowin, an album as excessive as a rebellious teen’s orange hair.
Vanilla Ice really can have an original flow when he wants to. I swear. It’s just that he tries too hard to sound like Snoop Doggy Dogg on songs like “The Wrath”: “It’s like that ‘cause I’m the mizzak, I carry my strizzap/To bust a kizzap, don’t try to jizzak me.”
But give the man some credit. He co-produced every song on the album and responded the only way he knew how to do – through his music – to some of the harshest criticism the music press has ever dished. For this reason, Mind Blowin is worth a listen. It’s a document of a musician at an artistic and critical crossroads, reinventing his image and trying to prove his detractors – who by then made up the entire world – wrong.
Vanilla Ice may never be able recapture the glory of “Ice, Ice Baby.” It’s partly because nobody will let him.
* As of 2001. Not even I followed his career after that.
