Police Say Rap Song Glorifies Drive-Bys : Music: Vanilla Ice’s publicist disagrees with the Ventura officers’ interpretation. She says he performs clean-cut songs.

Two Ventura policemen have stepped into the national controversy over rap music by saying they think a singer named Vanilla Ice is secretly glamorizing drive-by gang shootings in one of his hit songs.

At a lecture to a group of Ventura parents this week, Ventura Police Officer Juan Reynoso said Vanilla Ice may be referring to using drugs when he sings of “chumps acting ill because they’re so full of eight-balls” in his hit single “Ice Ice Baby.” An “eight-ball” is typically 3 1/2 grams of cocaine or methamphetamine, police said.

In addition, he said, some middle-school students who follow the pop star believe that the word “ice” in his name refers to the smokable form of methamphetamine.

However, Reynoso and Officer Ross Nideffer, who both teach drug education in Ventura schools, said people listening to the song might not realize the subtle messages if they are unfamiliar with gang slang.

Nideffer told parents at a music awareness program Wednesday night that he believes the song details gang activity.

While some of the lines might signify different things to different people, a reference to “gauge” in the fourth verse definitely refers to a shotgun and a “nine” to a 9mm handgun, he said.

“With my 10 years experience as a police officer, I know ‘wax a chump’ means to kill a rival,” said Nideffer, referring to the first verse of the song.

Publicists for Vanilla Ice--a 23-year-old rapper who goes by the name Ice--disagree with the interpretation.

“ ‘Wax a chump’ means he will excel above all other rappers,” said Elaine Schock, the New York publicist who handles Ice. “It’s a song about being on stage.”

Schock said Ice’s name only indicates that he is extremely cool. She said he performs clean-cut rap that even includes the phrase “Word to your mother!” as an encouragement to people to say hello to their mothers.

She said she was floored by other interpretations.

“It’s people like that that are the most dangerous in this country,” Schock said. “I’m just so sorry they’re policemen.”

The officers said they were trying to make parents more aware of subtle messages in the Vanilla Ice song when they gave a 2 1/2-hour seminar on music awareness and gang activity to about 50 parents at Portola Elementary School Wednesday night.

“At no time did we or are we trying to promote censorship,” Nideffer said. “We were merely suggesting that we all need to be aware. Otherwise we’re unable to guide our children.”

Nideffer and Reynoso put the program together at the suggestion of Portola Principal Phyllis Robertson, playing excerpts from the groups called 2 Live Crew and NWA. Children were barred from the event.

Nideffer said that the week before the program, three parents asked him about Vanilla Ice, who is popular with children as young as 8 years old. One woman told him that she had listened to the Vanilla Ice song but was not sure what it meant, Nideffer said.

After he investigated, Nideffer decided to focus the program on Vanilla Ice. He handed out a three-page dictionary of gang slang for parents’ reference and a text of “Ice Ice Baby” so people could follow the officers’ interpretation of the lines.

“There’s subtlety here,” he told the parents, contrasting Vanilla Ice to 2 Live Crew and NWA. “It’s a little bit harder to screen this and decide whether it’s appropriate.”

Parent Kim Saunders said her suspicions were confirmed when she attended the meeting. She had previously told her son Mark, 8, to stop singing the song in the house, but she was unsure what exactly had bothered her about it. She said since reading the text of the song at the meeting, she believes there is only one way to interpret it.

“It probably is over the kids’ heads,” Saunders said. “But if parents now know what it’s saying, there’s an obligation to keep it from the kids.”

The lecture on music in Ventura is only the most recent in a series of developments surrounding popular music.

On Oct. 20, the rap group 2 Live Crew was found not guilty of violating obscenity laws in a June 10 nightclub concert in Hollywood, Fla. Their best-selling album had been declared obscene by a federal court judge four days before the concert where they performed four songs from the album, “As Nasty as They Wanna Be,” that contained crude and graphic sexual language.

On Aug. 1, the FBI sent a letter to Priority records accusing rappers NWA of disrespect for police officers. First Amendment activists and a member of Congress later said the FBI may have stepped out of line.

In addition to controversies over rap groups, heavy-metal groups have also come under attack for allegedly hidden lyrics in their songs. In August, the British heavy-metal rock group Judas Priest was absolved in a court case in Reno of causing the suicide-related deaths of two Sparks, Nev., youths by a song allegedly encouraging suicide.