Consumer Guide Album

Ice-T: Home Invasion [Rhyme Syndicate, 1993]
At first it sounds as if the bad guys won--from sexy stories to o.g. kissoffs, he spends too much time proving he's still Ice Motherfucking T. But in fact he contextualizes himself as shrewdly as ever. He may write the misogynist rhymes--"I got an ill side that drips from my brain," he explains--but he leaves the worst to DJ Evil E and 2 Live Crew sicko Brother Marquis, the conceit being that some black men think women are hoes just like some black men wanna off cops, and that every one of these black men deserves to be heard. Which I buy, sort of, while noting that in the lead track a narrator posing as Ice-T offs a cop himself, and not for the last time. "Addicted to Danger" is a shrewd gangsta fable; "99 Problems" takes bitch-talk over the top where it belongs; Grip plays his Yo-Yo; the carefully phrased "Race War" and the self-aggrandizing "Message to a Soldier" and the amazing "Gotta Lotta Love" (is that a bridge?) are as politically felt as the greatest PE. But in a rapper as musically expedient as Ice-T, pro forma claims to hard prowess are rarely of much interest in themselves. Blame them on the bad guys. B+