POP MUSIC REVIEW : Ice-T’s Violent, X-Rated Rap Has a Beat but Is Lacking Spontaneity

For such a controversial guy, Ice-T certainly puts on a pedestrian show. Performing Sunday evening in the Cal State Fullerton gym, the rapper (who refers to Los Angeles, where he is based, as “the Vietnam of the United States”) wouldn’t have failed the expectations of any P.M.R.C. monitors in the audience: His 13 numbers were chock full of expletives and images of violence and crude sex.

But missing from the black-bereted, pistol-pendanted rapper’s show was most of his albums’ arguably more controversial politically based material. And, more crucially, there was no sense of spontaneity and engagement in his performance.

Ice-T posits on his current “Freedom of Speech . . . Just Watch What You Say” album that “We ain’t the problem, we ain’t the villains, The problem is keeping the truth from our children,” and one does have to wonder why rap music, considered a form of street newspaper by some, has been singled out for so much criticism.

There most certainly are guns pictured on the covers of Ice-T’s records, and his lyrics often contain chilling portraits of gang violence. But at least a quarter of all film ads have a prominent weapon. And is there any more chilling, violent image in music than Johnny Cash singing “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” to an audience of approving convicts?

It’s possible that the aural auditors are more discomfited by the way Ice-T and some other rappers place their violent street world in a moral perspective, as on Ice-T’s “This One’s for Me”:

“My homie got a year for an ounce of weed, While Bush sells weapons to the enemy.”

But, except for the show opening with the taped “Shut Up, Be Happy”--an ominous vision of a Brave New World where “the comfort you demanded is now mandatory”--Ice-T and his five-man Rhyme Syndicate Posse stuck to well-crafted, if thoroughly predictable, missives on his superiority with a microphone and a somewhat more personal appendage and his eerily gripping evocations of gang violence.

While the former categories offered some clever wordplay and better-than-average beats, their lyrics regarded women, at best, as sex objects. To confront the issue of freedom in some of his songs, while denying the individuality of over half the population in “The Iceberg,” “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” and other numbers, severly undercuts whatever credibility Ice-T strives for.

The concert may have been better attended were there not the specter of gang violence associated with rap shows, a worry made all the more present by the gang melee Friday evening at the Hi-Way 39 Drive-In in Westminster. The audience was nothing but civil, though and that seemed the intent of Ice-T’s performance.

Such numbers as “Drama” and the movie theme “Colors” created palpable sonic and verbal portraits of drive-by shootings, drug dealings and other aspects of the gang world. A cursory listen might have left the impression that he was glorifying that life. Rather, in a method common to the pulpit, his detailed familiarity with that life made his refutation of it that much stronger. Like the morality plays of old, his pumped-up tales of “Payback” killings and high rollin’ drug pushing invariably ended in misery or death.

Still, though he gesticulated with the best of ‘em, and his posse roamed and shouted throughout, the effect Ice-T achieves on record was seriously undercut Sunday by the formulaic, pre-programmed manner of the show, where every move and moment appeared scripted and where “Yo, this crowd is hype !” seemed merely to be the street translation of the Vegas “You’re-a- beautiful -audience” shuck.

And musically speaking, most rap sucks sprinkler heads. There’s no melody to speak of, the grooves are rudimentary, and with the canned backing tracks and the lyrics so locked into their schoolyard meter, there is scarcely any room for improvisation or added expression. And those factors can be all-important.

The music and imagery of the postwar Chicago blues was tremendously brutal, seen in comparison to the scrubbed pop music harmonies of their day. But the nature of the music allowed for such an individuality and expression to come through that its performance could carry an over-riding message of engagement in the moment and the worth of feeling life to its fullest. If Ice-T’s show was any indication, rap leaves little room for such immediacy. Ultimately, the lifelessness of his performance presented little alternative to the bleak world that inhabits his lyrics.

L.A.’s Untouchables preceded Ice-T with their standard blend of ska and funk influences. Performing the espionage-oriented soul classics “I Spy for the FBI” and “Agent Double-O Soul” and its own dance-bent “Free Yourself” and “Mandingo,” the seven-piece band’s energetic delivery wasn’t sufficient to jump it out of the limited stylistic rut it has occupied for years. Opening for the Untouchables was Divine Styler, an unimaginative new rap-worldbeat combo that seemed several years ahead of the Untouchables in digging its own rut.