Monday, 15 June 2015

Totally Iced Out : a compilation of Ice T remixes, features & loose tracks

Ice T circa Power to Original Gangster is probably my favourite rapper ever. I've mentioned before I was a bit disappointed with Home Invasion but he had a good 4-5 year run for the most part. As a bunch of my vinyl and CDs will be going into storage for while, I've been ripping audio like a madman and a result of that is this little comp. It's not meant to be exhaustive by any means - there was really no need to include Dick Tracy for example - but there's some nice remixes, guest spots and soundtrack joints that may have passed you by or been forgotten about...


We kick off with the Simon Harris Hi-Tech remix of 'Drama', taken from the UK 12" of High Rollers. Harris doesn't mess with the song too much, just adding a break beat and a few samples. One of the few exceptions to the rule that all UK remixes of US tracks are terrible. That's followed by 'Colors' which you'll know but as its probably the best Ice T track not to appear on one of his albums it had to be included. Next up is the remix of 'You Played Yourself' by King Tee & Aladdin, and the dope 12" remix of 'Heartbeat' featuring War. DJ Premier's remix of Lifestyles Of The Rich & Infamous is pretty nice, and the collaboration with Ice Cube for their movie Trespass (initially called Looters but switched in the wake of the LA riots) is a reminder that the whole soundtrack is worth pulling out once in a while. Into the Home Invasion era, I've included 3 remixes from this CD single - the Beatnuts remix of 'Addicted To Danger' and the superior version of G Style. I left out the Ronin remixes of Gotta Lotta Love and Thats How I'm Living though (see earlier comment regarding UK remixes). Things finish up with Tracey's guest spot on 2Pac's 'Last Wordz', from 93's 'Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ' and another West Coast posse cut taken from Spice 1's 'Black Bossalini' LP - the under the radar 'Recognize Game' with Too Short, from 1997.

If you're a fan I highly recommend checking out Ice on the Combat Jack Show, where he pretty much covers his entire life story in 2 hours. Interesting stuff with some great stories.
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4 comments:

  1. scjoha15 June 2015 at 15:41

    This is great, thanks for these quality rips! Ice-T's OG album was one of the first albums I had as a 14 year old, along with PE's Apocalypse 91, a Run DMC Best Of and 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Mind Over Matter and PE's Nighttrain were my jams back then and formed my taste in rap. Ice-T was iconic and was, together with Cube, the coolest and most gangsta, the role model for gangsta rap, long before Snoop, Biggie or Pac. (But not as long before Geto Boys, which had me scared back then.) And he was much more political and 'conscious' if you want, than those I named, and probably than anybody who came after him. So it's great to add these lesser known gems to the familiar album tunes.

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  2. Kelvin Mack10zie17 June 2015 at 13:16

    The I the C the E the T

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  3. Toby Hemming17 February 2016 at 23:04

    Any chance you could reupload this ? Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. step one18 February 2016 at 07:55

    new link now up

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