The Chuck D and Ice T cosign was completely unknown to me. I knew how he came up, and I knew he was well schooled on the rap game, but that tidbit was important for me to know.
The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
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Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#22It's nice to have a retrospective article like this that kinda post-mortems what happened in pop culture way back then.
The article focuses on hip hop but pop music was swinging towards the grunge era at this time, and there was a focus on authenticity (the article mentions the milli vanilli fiasco).
With In Living Color and Arsenio Hall both calling him fake, he was fucking doomed
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#23That's a long article - anyone want to take a stab at tl;dr?
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#24I read this and enjoyed it, especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc)..
After working with lots of artists over the years I tend to just think of them as instruments in an overall track, and their stories and narrative of the timelines is unreliable at best. I would really have liked more perspective in the story from the music producers POV, as I feel like I got a unique and more objective point of view seeing both the business, personal, public, and artistic side. While many of the rappers are just kind of lifestyle method actors, and as the years go by I wonder about these late stage interviews.
Interesting article though
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#25That's a long article - anyone want to take a stab at tl;dr?
Vanilla had just as much if not more street cred than other white rappers, but due to bad timing and worse marketing he got skewered as "fake" and that nuked his career.
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#26It's nice to have a retrospective article like this that kinda post-mortems what happened in pop culture way back then. The article focuses on hip hop but pop music was swinging towards the grunge era at this time, and there was a focus on authenticity (the article mentions the milli vanilli fiasco). With In Living Color and Arsenio Hall both calling him fake, he was fucking doomed
Hip hop evolution TV miniseries on Netflix does a really nice history on it from the very early days.
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#27The Chuck D and Ice T cosign was completely unknown to me. I knew how he came up, and I knew he was well schooled on the rap game, but that tidbit was important for me to know.
Me neither, I knew Everlast used to do stuff for Ice T but wasn't aware of him
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#28That's a long article - anyone want to take a stab at tl;dr?
Very well worth the read, a summary can't do justice to the author's work.
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#29I read this and enjoyed it, especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc).. After working with lots of artists over the years I tend to just think of them as instruments in an overall track, and their stories and narrative of the timelines is unreliable at best. I would really ha…
> especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc)..
Wait... you produced those early Kreayshawn joints? HN is a wild place hah.
> I would really have liked more perspective in the story from the music producers POV
This is pretty much how I feel about every piece of media on music/artists/bands/etc. Song Exploder is one of the few that puts that process & the accompanying story front and center. It makes the content far more interesting IMO.
Re: The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice
#30I read this and enjoyed it, especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc).. After working with lots of artists over the years I tend to just think of them as instruments in an overall track, and their stories and narrative of the timelines is unreliable at best. I would really ha…
> "'Gucci Gucci' is completely traumatizing. When that song comes on, it makes my ears feel like they're bleeding," Zolot said, explaining that the track itself has had a big negative impact on her. "Like, it makes me feel like I'm gonna die. It gives me a panic attack hearing that song."
> Part of it has been the pressure of trying to make another hit "as big as 'Gucci Gucci'" in subsequent years. However, the bigger issue that's continued to goad her is the fact that she receives no royalties and is still in debt to Sony for $800,000 for it — something she addressed in a string of tweets asking people to stop buying and streaming the track.
Maybe, just maybe, thinking of vocal artists as just instruments in an overall track is a mistake?
It's cool and all that you "found" her but it doesn't sound like she was very happy with how things turned out. Having someone else in the studio who didn't think she was just an "instrument" might have been nice.
Just saying.