Steve 'Flash' JuonI guess we weren’t quite done with IceJJFish after all, even though I certainly wanted to be. I wasn’t sure at first that “The Beginning” even existed since it wasn’t mentioned on his Wikipedia discography, but my source was quite insistent it was real, and sure enough I found it on both YouTube and Amazon. God, I wish I hadn’t.
“Baby baby baby don’t you don’t you know I care for youuuuuu/and I’ll always be there for youuuuuu.” If you listen to “I Care” you’re never going to be able to forget Ice caterwauling these words, but give me a bottle of absinthe to chug because I’m going to give it my best shot. The allegedly hallucinogenic effects of it would certainly come in handy too. Right now I have to imagine that tripping balls would be better than the ear rape I just experienced, and quite possibly Ice was equally high when he thought recording this was a good idea. For someone who professes how much he loves Jesus, he should probably pray to him for forgiveness for these songs.
It’s perhaps even more insulting when you hear what starts out as a good SpacedTime instrumental on a track like “In Handy” only for Ice’s glass shattering falsetto to completely destroy the beat. “Oh girl you come in handy/you remind me of some candy.” Not only is his singing insultingly bad, his lyrics suggest that he never made it past the first grade. I really don’t know what the fuck is wrong with this dude. I can understand how Odd Future/Loiter Squad would big this guy up just for the laughs. I can understand how people would share his music just to be like “No. Seriously. You have GOT to hear this.” The only thing I can’t understand is how Ice could have been so oblivious to the fact that he’s the butt of the joke and keep on making more tracks. I’ve seen diamonds that are less dense.
If I could find an instrumental of “I Got You” without the vocals I’d listen to it again. Ice is trying his hardest to break microphones, equalizers, headphones, mixing boards and the patience of listeners with his performance, but that electronic video game inspired backdrop is pretty nice. I might just try to take a few seconds of it and loop it myself, if I can find enough parts of the track without this wretched abomination of a singer/rapper/whatever performing on it. I don’t even think Satan is real and I would still say he has more to do with IceJJFish than anything holy.
There are only two good things about “The Beginning” — one is SpacedTime has decent beats, and the other is that it’s only five tracks long. Even that is a regrettable five tracks too many of Ice. I would rather listen to Vanilla Ice do nu metal than ever hear IceJJFish sing again, and if that doesn’t say it all I don’t know what does. The score may be misleading for two reasons — SpacedTime doesn’t suck, and Matt Jost told me not to give rappers 0 out of 10 even if they’re complete garbage. I’m warning you though not to listen to this unless you are a sadomasochist dying to have an all day migraine headache. Holy shit he’s awful.