December 08, 2008

"I Love You": The Worst Song Ever

or, Vanilla Ice Sells Out

Essay by Matthew Webber

The lounge is filled with VIPs: producers, managers, label execs... DJs, dancers, eyebrow stylists... and finally, the dream, the great white hope, the rapper/dancer/entertainer/star to whom a nation of eyes will turn, at least those eyes in junior high, and maybe the eyes of concerned mothers everywhere. The star, the white boy, plays his funky music: fourteen deadly, ice-cold tracks, an album of songs that bum rush the speakers. The DJs say, “Damn!” The girlies go crazy. One of the homeboys eats spaghetti with a spoon. Over the pasta, the lounge smells like happiness – fame, money, world domination – as each dope melody flows into the next. Mics get rocked. Chumps get waxed. Juice gets kicked. It’s colder than ever.

The album ends. It sounds like a hit. The V.I.P. posse congratulates itself.

“If rhyme was a drug, we’d sell it by the gram!”

“We’re cooking MCs like a pound of bacon!”

“It flows like a harpoon daily and nightly!”

Vanilla Ice responds with a simple, “Yup, yup.” Then he rises, starts to leave. “Yo, man, let’s get outta here. Word to your–”

“Stop.” A voice, a stranger, emerges from the ether. “Collaborate and listen.” His suit commands the posse’s attention; otherwise, the jackers would’ve jacked him, and how. “The album’s not done. You need one more song.”

The DJ, Deshay, puts his gauge away, but Vanilla keeps his hand on his nine, just in case. The stranger could be full of eight balls, or worse. He might be a chump; he might act ill. “If the situation in which I’ve just found myself does indeed become a problem,” Vanilla thinks, “then, yo, I’ll solve it.” He’s worked too hard at fabricating his past to let some stranger ruin his future. He’ll keep his composure; it’s time to get loose. For now, though, he’ll listen, and that’s all he’ll do. Collaboration seems out of the question.

“All right,” says the Ice Man. “But this better be a hell of a concept. Conducted and formed. Feasible. At least as much as a chemical spill. Basically, will I wanna step with this?”

“What you need is a song called ‘I Love You,’” says the stranger. “For the ladies.”

“I’m poppin’ it the most,” says Vanilla. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

“Um,” says the stranger. The posse laughs.

“I’m hittin’ hard and the girlies goin’ crazy. Vanilla’s on the mic, man, I’m not lazy.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying that, Mr. Ice. I know you’re not hooked on that ‘S-S-S-Y’! I’m just saying – I’m just suggesting – that instead of rapping about these girlies – I mean, ladies – you sing a song directly to them. A love song. A ballad. You know, like LL Cool J does. And the ladies love that guy! After all, grown women buy albums, too. It’s not just prepubescent boys, even though there are literally millions of them in the Midwest who are gonna buy your album this year and throw it away next year while subsequently denying they’ve ever heard of you, St. Peter-style.”

“Go on, white boy,” says the Ice Man, suddenly all ears, instead of all cheekbones. He stores away the reference to the Gospels for possible inclusion in the liner notes of his sophomore album. “Go.”

“As you surely must know – you can’t be that dumb – you’re gonna get sold as a product, not an artist. You’re gonna fill a niche for millions of kids who want to like songs with rhythmic speaking, but aren’t quite ready for actual, honest-to-goodness rapping. Something about polysyllables scares them. Or maybe it’s the blackness of every other rapper. Not to play the race card, but come on? Vanilla Ice? Wearing the American flag as a jacket? Middle America will devour you like ice cream! The kids are gonna eat you up!

“They’re gonna shit you out, but still. White boys and white girls will enjoy you going down. The kids who don’t know that you jacked ‘Under Pressure’? They’ll just think the beat is dope, because, lets face it, the beat is dope. Queen and David Bowie? Damn. That’s a beat that can’t be ruined, not even by a flow as simple as yours. If anything, your simplicity helps to sell the song, since the kids can more easily memorize the lyrics – and even bust ‘em out at their weddings! You’ll see.”

“What?” says Vanilla, honored, yet skeptical. His fabricated past should’ve rendered him more dangerous.

“No, really. Trust me on this. It’s you and Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Rednex. You’ll see. And Tiffany’s gonna do Playboy. You’ll love it!”

The Ice Man leans back and imagines the future. He’s blinded by the sweat that rolls into his eyes, one of the perils of shaving his eyebrows. All he can see is Debbie Gibson, naked. And Paula Abdul, strung out on drugs. Tiffany? Drowned, and choking on coins, with a mall cop diving in after her body.

The shadowy ghosts of... reality TV? The specter of something called... YouTube? The fear! Marky Mark at the Oscars? A nightmare! Ice-cold night sweats! Holy fuck! At least his friend Hammer will never go away. One more dance-off, for old time’s sake...

Is this what havin’ a roni is like?

The man in the suit continues his pitch, ignoring the terror, the dying star. “So ‘Ice Ice Baby’ – we know that’s a hit. ‘Conducted and formed?’ It’s quite the high concept. It’s the best ‘brand new invention’ in pop culture since the Ninja Turtles. We really oughta hook you up.

“But that’s just the kids. So, what about their parents? More specifically, what about their mothers? What about their grandmothers?

“Vanilla – if I can call you that – a smart businessman diversifies. You need to expand your portfolio of fans. If you want to last – or at least last longer than Another Bad Creation – you need to appeal to everyone, everywhere. Or at least you need to try. So, try it! Hell, you’ve already got your beatboxing track, as if any hip-hop head could ever take you seriously. You’ve already got your reggae jam, as if you’ve ever a) listened to, enjoyed, or been inspired by reggae; b) seen, talked to, or even, before looking it up in the encyclopedia, had foreknowledge of a ‘Rosta Man’; or c) made friends with black people who aren’t on your payroll.

“You’ve got your dance tracks, your sex jams, your skits. You’ve got a bit of everything, or everything that sucks. Clearly, you’re cool with looking like a sellout. So why not sell out one more time? Why not go the sellout distance – like Costner in the sellout corn! – and add this one more, one last, track?

“Add ‘I Love You.’ For the ladies. And also for the kids who’ll laugh at you later, mocking not you, but themselves for ever listening. Give their lives meaning, in contrast to yours. Your songs are bad, Ice, but this song is bad. Don’t just jump the shark...”

“What?”

“...but catch the shark, mount it on a goalpost, and set the new world record in pole vaulting over that shark.”

“What?”

Poof! He’s gone, in a sulfurous flash.

Vanilla Ice grins. He smells collaboration.

Before the posse knows what hurt ‘em (hint: it wasn’t the aforementioned Hammer), Vanilla Ice enlists other sellouts in project: The songwriter looking for her first big break. The saxophone soloist with hungry mouths to feed. The recording engineer whose lifelong dream is to splice a G-rated phone-sex conversation into the breakdown of a pop song. And every other enabler who hears this track, surely knows how rancid it is, but places it on the To the Extreme album anyway in perhaps the most futile bid for crossover appeal – or appealingness in any form – in the history of recorded sound.

And finally – finally! – the Iceman cometh: cooing, whispering, coughing up a hairball... less like a rapper than a non-native-English speaker, less like a loverman than a heavy breather, less like LL Cool J in the bedroom than Heavy D at the top of a flight of stairs.

Record it. Mix it. Slap it on the album. Sell it to millions of kids... like me.

Burn out, die, and fall to earth.

Vanilla Ice’s “I Love You” is a song bereft: of melody, sincerity, virtuosity, or anything else that makes music musical. Crass, unlistenable, unintentionally hilarious, “I Love You” is, simply, a song bereft. Calling it cheesy insults America’s dairy industry. Calling it schmaltzy demeans yourself, for lacking a stronger, more memorable word. Really, it isn’t a song at all, except when you’re proclaiming it the worst song ever.

I hate you, “I Love You,” and your saxophonist, too.