Nowadays my main Friday night ritual is watching BBC4’s re-runs of old Top Of The Pops episodes, and two hall of fame Pop-Rap classix were performed on last night’s 1990 shows. And I do mean performed because this was the era when Top Of The Pops began insisting that artists played live in a bid to make the show more credible/as a sneaky ploy to stop Rave acts with songs extolling drug use appearing on TV. If you were in high school or up in clubs when Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby and Dream Warriors’ My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style first dropped you loved both songs and you either lyin’ or you were listening to Timmy Mallet if you claim otherwise.
On the evidence of the Ice Ice Baby clip, Vanilla Ice was a far better live performer than many of the G.O.A.T’s including Rakim and Nas. Get yourself a Rapper who can dance and rhyme at the Same Damn Time!™
