On a cameo appearance on DJ Cisco’s Urban Legends Mixxtape (released 6/17), rapper Ice-T took some shots at a couple of rap music’s more recent pieces of garbage. While he simply told Hurricane Chris to “take those f*ckin’ beads out [of your] f*ckin’ head,” he had a considerably harsher critique of one Soulja Boy (winner of this very site’s Worst Album of 2007), saying, among other things, “F*ck Soulja Boy. Eat a dick. … Soulja Boy, I know [you’re] young enough to be my kid, but you single-handedly killed hip-hop, man (echoing sentiments from the above link). … That shit is such garbage” (hear the entire clip here).
In response to Ice-T’s vitriol, Soulja Boy posted his own video message, making such comments as “Ice-T [is] old as f*ck”, that he is the “forefather of my nuts”, is an “old-ass n*gga” (about two dozen or so times, and it’s a recurring theme throughout), that “the last time I heard of [Ice-T] was in a super-hero book” (I have no idea what that’s supposed mean), that Ice-T “was born before the Internet was even created”, as well as adding that Ice-T shouldn’t talk about Hurricane Chris since he’s still “rockin’ a sherm perm” (probably the best zinger in the bunch, unfortunately) and adding, “when you [were] born, [people were] still drivin’ in wood cars.” Believe it or not, it gets even worse from there, as the entire thing lasts more than seven minutes, though most of it is Soulja Boy just rambling, even trying to get preachy, and basically making himself look like a complete idiot in the process (hear the entire clip here).
More recently, Ice-T decided to try and set the record straight, with an incredibly back-handed apology to Soulja Boy:
“I wanna reply to all this internet drama that’s goin’ down… I said something about this kid Soulja Boy [while I was] doin’ a mixtape, you know. The cats took it… you know, they basically were askin’ me how I felt about it; you know, the state of hip-hop and Soulja Boy, and I went on one. … So I apologize, Soulja Boy, for telling you to eat a dick. That was just in anger, you understand? Because truthfully, you know, a brotha of my caliber should not be talking down to a youngster of your age. But as far as your music goes, it’s garbage, you know. And I’m sayin’ that for all of hip-hop, homie. … There’s kids that go in the studio and really try to rap. That really sit down with a pen and write stuff. …
“Hip-hop has gotta last forever and it can’t with you doin’ that “Superman” bullshit. … We gotta get rid of that, man. … That shit is wack, trust me. … And you may feel like, “Well, Ice-T, you shouldn’t have said that.” Well, you shouldn’t have responded, pimpin’. … There’s nothing you can do to hurt me. … You was supposed to take that. See, sometimes when old-school brothas try to tell you something, you supposed to just accept it and keep it movin’. …
“Ain’t gonna be no war. Ain’t no East Coast-West Coast. Ain’t North or South. … If [there’s going to be] any war, it’s gonna be good hip-hop versus wack hip-hop. … Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nobody cares about lyrics anymore. Maybe nobody cares about kids that really go into the studio and bleed over the track, you know. Maybe hip-hop is all about some bullshit-ass dance. … Maybe that’s what it is” (full clip here).
It’s that last point that really should really resonate. Close to half of the MGF staff have been saying this for a while now. While the rare hip-hop gem does still exist, most of the rap music being played on mainstream outlets and being blared in pimped-out Escalades these days is absolutely worthless. It’s really sad to see how the genre has gone from being one that had to work hard and prove its worth for recognition to something that can essentially phone it in and pretty much just have one lame little gimmick and/or good PR people to make it popular. And we’re seeing people increasingly phoning it in across more than one medium, too (see, e.g., reality television, designer trucker caps, Coke Blak), because the bigwigs have realized that the hoi polloi will buy into anything these days. Just the fact that someone like Soulja Boy is able to make millions of dollars for doing something that the rest of us could do (if we knew the right people), while people like Matthew Michaels have to sell vacuum cleaners in order to pay their rent, is just sad. It’s a damn shame, folks, and you can only expect it to get worse.
In the end, Ice-T should have taken the high road and not said anything. Everybody knows that Soulja Boy sucks; this is fact that has been a proven several times over and will continue to be proven every time some misguided DJ plays any of his material to unsuspecting ears. He’s just stating the obvious. And as I stated in the link above, Soulja Boy didn’t “single-handedly” kill hip-hop—he’s actually just contributing to its demise. The genre has been really rough for a while now. But anyway, not only is Ice-T in a completely different league than Soulja Boy (as he himself points out in his second clip), but he’s actually (a) doing himself a disservice by firing off on him (kind of like someone picking on a retarded kid), (b) giving Soulja Boy more attention that he doesn’t deserve and (c) reminding us of Soulja Boy just when we’d almost forgotten about him. Therefore, he’s punishing the rest of us with what will no doubt be at least one more Soulja Boy release on which he’ll probably have to hire someone like Xzibit to help him write what will still be the world’s weakest diss track since Nelly decided to pop off on KRS-One. Thanks, Ice-T. Thanks a lot. This was exactly what we needed.
(VinylNotes.com, YouTube.com, EW.com)
