Published on Jul 27, 2001
Every once in a while, I get to prove just how uncool I am. (The
frequency of this will go up once my daughter becomes a teenager.)
I recently got to prove this as a caller to the “Tom And Joanie”
morning show on WIIL-FM, when I was able to correctly identify the
robotic renditions of a set of lyrics to be “Ninja Rap” by Vanilla
Ice. Tom Kief, the station’s webmaster and morning co-host,
proclaimed me to be a dork of some caliber, joining an ever-growing
crowd of well-wishers I’ve dealt with over the years. (Memo to Tom:
Hey,
you
programmed the DJ-9000… and thanks for the
software!)
So, allow me to say to Tom Kief and the gang at 95 WIIL Rock:
Tom, this review is dedicated to you. You see, after happily making
an ass of myself on the air, I dug out my previously unopened copy
of
Mind Blowin from the former Robert Van Winkle. If you want
to blame anyone for this review, dear reader – ah, what the hell,
blame Tom. Why not? Chances are good he’s gonna have fun with
this review on the air, and I need to deflect some of the
flak!
You probably have never heard of this album – most likely
because when it came out in 1994, the anti-Vanilla Ice sentiment
was stronger than a North Side Chicagoan’s hopes of the Cubs making
it to the World Series in any given year. This disc had about as
much promotion as a cock fight, and it died almost immediately upon
release. (Interestingly enough, copies of
Mind Blowin at one time were selling for outrageous prices
on eBay.) Put it this way: I think
Cool As Ice was in the theaters longer than this album was
on the shelves.
In 1994, Ice had taken a critical and commercial beating. The
public – mind you, the same group of people who bought 11 million
copies of
To The Extreme – turned on Ice quicker than a dog pissing on
a fire hydrant. The failure of his movie
Cool As Ice didn’t help matters – and Ice’s discovery of
marijuana at some point might have confused even the strongest fan.
Indeed,
Mind Blowin was not the same rapper that was on
To The Extreme, even with the occasional nod to “Ice Ice
Baby”. This was a rapper who paid homage to Cypress Hill (even to
the point of sampling them) by worshipping the joint, even posing
for a picture in the liner notes while holding a lit blunt. This
was a rapper who nodded his head to gangsta rap, even though there
is no cursing on this release. This was a rapper who nodded his
head to 2 Live Crew and talked about gettin’ freaky with the ladies
– again while withholding the usual trash talk, but leaving very
little to the imagination.
Yes,
Mind Blowin was an album whose title lived up to
expectations. But the shocking thing is that Ice actually had an
album that was worth listening to, even if he didn’t have a clue
which direction he wanted to take his craft into. In truth, this
release was pretty good – and if people hadn’t been prejudiced by
Ice’s first releases and critical success-gone-sour, then this
release might have been recognized for what it is.
I will pause now so the faithful readers can stop laughing.
Ice makes no bones about his earlier success and the
difficulties one can have with going from nothing to the top of the
charts (“Fame,” “Bullet On The Chart”), but he claims that he’s
still the same guy he was all along. What
Mind Blowin allows Ice to do is to explore facets of his
career he couldn’t have touched as a pin-up superstar, from the
violent side of the music (“The Wrath”) to the, aah, “cloudy”
(“Roll ‘Em Up”) to the overtly sexual (“Now & Forever,”
“Blowin’ My Mind”). What’s surprising about these tracks is that
Ice actually sounds liberated, and is more comfortable in his raps
than he might have been otherwise.
This isn’t to say that
Mind Blowin is a masterpiece. There are still some vestiges
of his old self that needed to be buried under a ten-ton boulder.
“Iceman Party” sounds like it could have been left over from the
To The Extreme sessions, while “I Go Down” could have been a
better song overall had it not been for the half-assed chorus.
C’mon, Ice, that was the best you could do on that particular song?
And while we’re at it, making references to Tupac Shakur doesn’t
necessarily put you on the same level as him.
Memo to Ice, just in case he’s reading: Do my ears deceive me,
or do I detect a sample of the live version of Mountain’s “Long
Red” on “Fame” – namely, the cry of “louder”? Let me know.
I recognize that admitting you like a Vanilla Ice record is akin
to attending a Secret Service convention and waving a pistol
around; sooner rather than later, someone’s gonna open up a can of
whup-ass on you. But in the case of
Mind Blowin, I’ll take the heat. Fact is, had people taken
Ice a little more seriously when this came out, they would have
recognized it as a serious transition for Ice from pop rap
superstar to someone who wanted to take his craft a little more
seriously. If you ever see a copy, it’s worth checking out – so
long as you go into the album with an open mind.