The Soundtrack to Eating: The Frozen Trifecta

An analysis of how ‘90s rappers, Ice Cube, Iced Tea, and Vanilla Ice have each lived up to their frosty namesakes.

The Soundtrack to Eating is a series in which staff writers write about how food and music are intertwined.

Written and illustrated by Mark Yoder

In today’s rap vernacular, the word “ice” is a mainstay, and as the amount of ice in the Arctic declines, the number of times it is mentioned in rap songs only increases. Ice can sometimes refer to crystal meth or murder, but in rap music, it is almost always referring to diamond encrusted jewelry, alluding to their shared transparency. However, its use in hip hop does not stop with lyrics. In fact, many rappers have included the word “ice” in their rap name simply because they think it sounds cool.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s there were three rappers who captivated the masses and cleverly named themselves after icy things. Vanilla Ice, who with a combination of good looks, wacky dance moves, and his hit song “Ice Ice Baby,”became one of the first commercially successful white rappers overnight. Ice-T, a true jack of all trades, is most notably a gangsta rap pioneer turned television actor. Ice Cube — a triple-double machine — is a founding member of the hugely influential rap group, N.W.A. Many could argue about who of these three has the best lyrics (Ice Cube), the best dance moves (Vanilla Ice), or the even the best tweets (Ice-T by a landslide), but no one has considered how these three stack up in comparison to  the icy items they named themselves after.

Photo courtesy of D Magazine

Let’s start with Vanilla Ice. What’s not to love about vanilla ice cream? It’s classic, it’s sweet, it tastes good! The only problem is that it melts quickly and too much of it will give you a brain freeze. The same could be said about the rap career of Vanilla Ice. He embodied the version of rap that middle America could get behind. He was handsome, he danced well, and his hit song “Ice Ice Baby” didn’t have any curse words in it, so it was fun for the whole family. But from his style of rap to the way he dressed, everything about Vanilla Ice was painfully generic and sugary, and ultimately, his career melted away faster than an ice cream cone on the beach in mid-August.

Photo courtesy of HipHopDX

Iced tea is a versatile American staple. It has many different flavors and can be as sweet or as bitter as the consumer wants it to be. Similar to the beloved drink, Ice-T has his many manifestations. He went from serving in the military to robbing banks to DJing to rapping to acting and becoming a widely popular Twitter personality. He released an anti-police song called “Cop Killer” with his heavy metal band, Body Count, and then later went on to portray a cop on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” for eighteen years. On Twitter, he fluctuates between posting wholesome pictures with his daughter and lashing out at random trolls who question his credibility. That’s called versatility.

Photo courtesy of Rolling Stone

While he was in N.W.A., Ice Cube brought a cold blooded lyricism, writing the majority of his fellow group members’ verses. But after getting scammed out of money he was owed, he left the group and went solo. This started a diss war between him and his entire former group, which ultimately — in most people’s eyes — left him on top. Ice Cube is no nonsense, has no need for any bells and whistles, and is guaranteed to make anything he touches colder.

Both in rap and food, Ice Cube is easily the most essential of the three. It would be almost impossible for iced tea or vanilla ice cream to exist without the use of ice cubes, and the careers of Ice-T and Vanilla Ice might not exist without Ice Cube. In 1988, Ice Cube’s rap group, N.W.A., released the anti-police brutality hit “Fuck tha Police,” four years before Ice-T teamed up with Body Count to create “Cop Killer.” Needless to say, Ice Cube did it first and he did it better. Vanilla Ice, on the other hand, was inspired by Ice Cube and Ice-T in his early career, opening for both of them in concert. Ice cubes aren’t fully responsible for creating ice cream or iced tea, and Ice Cube didn’t create Ice-T or Vanilla Ice, but he definitely influenced them.

It’s easy to take these cold rappers and their contributions to hip-hop for granted, just like it’s easy to not fully appreciate what their consumable namesakes add to the menu. So, to pay respect to some of the pioneers of the rap game and fully experience their essence, scoop out some vanilla ice cream while playing “Ice Ice Baby” full volume, pour a tall glass of iced tea while listening to “Original Gangster,” and crunch on a couple of ice cubes to the tune of “It Was a Good Day.”