652 Ice T - OG Original Gangster (1991)

 652 Ice T - OG Original Gangster (1991)

Studio Album - Gangsta Rap


About the Act:

He's a Gangsta Rapper. He came from da hood, or at least hood adjacent. He made some rap records, and also, bizarrely, started a heavy metal band and released some metal records too. He's also an actor.

About the Album:

This was his fourth album. At 72:17 minutes it's loooooong.

My History with this Album:

None

Review:

The second track is an intellectual female voice giving a short monologue. This is how it starts:

"Upon initial contact with Ice-T's music, I had envisioned him to be an ill-mannered and psychologically unstable man with an extremely uneducated and barbaric frame of mind, whose raps displayed nothing but ridiculous jargon, shocking sexual audacity and repulsive images of the ghetto."

I would say it's not quite that bad, but this definitely sets the scene.

There are some standard topics for Gangsta Rap:

  1.  I come from the gangs, I have an inherently violent past and violence is glorified.
  2. I am the best rapper ever, I will blow your mind. P.S. disses for specific other rappers
  3. Graphic sexual boasting, usually highly misogynistic and with little concept of love or relationships
  4. Shout outs to my heroes
  5. I do drugs, maybe even sell drugs, because I am amazing.

This album covers 1, 2, and 4. There is some mention of drugs and one vignette where somebody is begging him to do a "sex" track, but he turns it into a joke, effectively. I tried to really dislike this album, and there is enough here to be appalled by, but there are some merits. There is a sense of humour at times, there is a decent roll call of early rap, and it's not heavy on the sex and drugs. It does have points to make about the incarceration of Black Young Men in America, which is fair comment. It is, however, heavy on the self-aggrandisement. It's not the most glorifying of violence, but it is somewhat. It is totally littered with the worst language he can think of, and there is a focus at times on explaining why he uses some of those words, but it doesn't help a lot to be honest. I think it is fair to say he is angry and proud.

And the content is obviously the focus. Musically, it's what you might expect, rapping, with beats and backing samples. I actually didn't hate it musically, the beats were reasonable (I refuse to categorise them as Dope or Fly, because that's just not me, and also they seem like superlatives, and I'm not feeling superlative towards it). The samples were OK, some of the rapping flow was pretty good (to my severely untutored ears).

And then there's the heavy metal track in the middle. Now I'm more at home in this area. It was not good heavy metal, sorry Ice-T, I actually like the rapping better.

So, it has some redeeming features, which bring it up to...

5.5/10

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/08Bjvwbg1cFsFfXSdhG23I?highlight=spotify:track:0G3ImRQDWtOTwTK1oL5uWF

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL59Fvqq26cEinBXCSLeij3lgYjs7pmmJN

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.G._Original_Gangster



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