Rapper/Actor
Ice T is engaged in a heady YouTube debate with Soulja Boy, who penned the
infectious “Crank That” and had America doing the Soulja Boy step. There always
seems to be a chasm between generations in hip-hop: youthful misunderstanding
and mis-direction of the legacy versus old–school cats aching for a return to
relevancy and substance. I’ve
fought that fight myself. I don’t
know that Ice T is the poster boy for the
cause of rap relevancy—there’s no denying he’s an OG in the game and he elevated
the discourse, but not by much. He should leave Soulja Boy alone.
Back when he was rocking spiked gloves, skinny jeans, elf
boots and a thirsty perm in Breakin,’
he was rapping about
what everyone else was rapping about—the Dj. He was like a lot of rappers
trying to cash in on the co-opting of hip-hop by the mainstream.—that’s not a
knock, that’s just the truth. As the
times changed, his narrative changed just like everyone else’s did, and he
started rapping about the reality of hustling to survive. Ice T wasn’t spitting
gangster rap so much as street knowledge: Ice laid the laws of the street out
for people that didn’t know, and made a niche for himself. His gangster credentials
are shakey at best (affiliation isn’t membership), but his ghetto pass is
certified. Ice T’s appeal peaked with Power, simply an incredible record from start
to finish, even today. It’s real talk, from the first cut to the last. Ghetto politics, on a higher level. But it came
out in the middle of rap music’s Black Nationalist phase, when record companies
thought it was sexy to market roots and radics to white college kids. He’s put
out more records, but none have really hit. Ice T was just relevant enough back in the day and has a solid body of work of no one can touch.
Soulja Boy
made a song with only a slightly veiled reference to squirting girls with male
ejaculant for fun. And it’s the kind of
party record people will be dancing to 15 years from now and still have no idea
what it’s actually about. He’s had other hits, but none like “Crack.” With no
samples and low-cost production quality, Soulja Boy is likely to be eating of
rap music for a long time. Soulja is a product of a new, semi-disposable hip-hop
aesthetic where cross-over appeal is not only desired but encouraged, and the
art in the song is only as valuable as its hook and chart position. No one
cares about skills anymore—certainly not the white people who buy most rap
music. It now just serves as a diversion, (real or imagined) Coon Tales from
Across the Tracks, something that can be packaged, diluted and resold to the
masses as a ringtone. When times change, rap music changes, and Soulja Boy is
at least as relevant as anything else on the radio.
Neither Ice or Soulja is rapping about getting out
the vote, the grinding economy or our foreign policy, or even have a hit on the
radio for that matter. That makes the back and forth kinda farcical and pointless,
even if the subtext is interesting. Ice T doesn’t think that “happy rap” is
real rap. I think crunk, hyphy, whisper, techtonik, hip-house-- it’s all an
encouraging sign of evolution and change.
I’ll give you that
switching from songs about shooting bullets and dice to songs about shooting
sperm is kind of a net wash, but I don’t know that either style offers much
back to the art-form than the other. Does pop rap dilute the art? Probably. But
until Ice T is ready to do a cover of “The
White Man Got A God Complex,” or step the game up measurably, he should fall
back and let Soulja Boy make his mail.
