Creative Ice-T Album

For me Ice-T is one of the best rappers ever and I've spent long hours listening to his hardcore gangster rap. Kind of odd for a middle-aged white guy but what can I say? His in your face, pro-freedom of speech attitude is one that I hold myself. He is one of the founding fathers of gangster rap and one of it's most innovative lyricists. I've seen Ice-T do his rap act only once but have seen him with his band Body Count four times and he puts on a tremendous show.



Home Invasion is probably the funniest album Ice-T has put out and it is one of my favorites. I find it odd that Ice-T fans that I know don't like this album as much as I did. It think it's a superb album and while not as good as OG The Original Gangster, it may be Ice-T's most creative album (other than Body Count's first release).



I rate this album very highly. In fact it gets six starts from some very excellent songs. Very few albums get six starts from me. Most albums you're lucky to have but one song you truly like on it. This one is full of good songs.



The six stars are for:



Home Invasion *

G Style **

Watch the Ice Break *

Pimp Behind the Wheels *

99 Problems *



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Ratings: CDs are rated simply by how many good songs are on the album. Great songs get two stars, and good songs get one star. Songs that get no stars are those that I might like but not enough to give it a star or ones I find boring or actively dislike. CDs are not penalized for songs that I don't like because they are easy enough to skip over. There is no maximum number of stars a CD can get, but of course the more stars it gets, the better the CD.



As with all reviews, these are my subjective opinions on the album.

I like it despite obvious flaws

Ice-T's 5th offering is for the most part considerably more aggressive, both in lyrics and in music, than his earlier works. I think it's partly so because of all the problems with his song "Cop Killer", and the resulting break up with his record label. But part of this newly found aggression was surely added intentionally. Think of it as a concept of O.G. pushed to the edge and then some. Many people didn't appreciate it, and many complained about over the top amounts of explicit lyrics here, much of which are there just for the sake of it. I think it's not a problem, as it gives the album great recognizability and a character of its own. "Home Invasion" is the album that has some of the best Ice-T songs, like "It's On", "Home Invasion", "Race War", "Watch The Ice Break", or "Gotta Lotta Love". It also struck me with its 2 slow tracks, "Addicted to Danger" and "That's How I'm Livin'", both of which feature an unusually melodic, and at the same time very menacing and dense musical background, with Ice-T's vocal tone to match. These are the tracks that will easily justify the purchase of this album.



On the down side, there are several worthless filler tracks here, that should have been scrapped before the CD went into print. It's the pointless guest-star songs "Depths of Hell" and "Funky Gripsta", as well as a couple of other weaker tracks. Whether their presence lowers the value of this album, is to be decided by the listener him/herself.



My copy of "Home Invasion" came with a bonus remix CD titled "The Last Temptation of Ice". Of 7 tracks there, one, "Ricochet", is previously unreleased. The liner notes suggest that it was written during the "O.G." sessions. This one is quite good. I also liked remixes for "Gotta Lotta Love" and "G-Style", which add more musical value to these, musically basic, tracks. The other 4 songs on the remix CD are a throwaway, most always lyrically edited for radio format. I guess, this bonus CD wasn't worth the extra bucks that I paid for it.

Ice-T - Home Invasion

This was a pretty bad album from Ice-T but I've heard worse from him. I think that all that "Cop Killer" hoopla clouded his vision. There are a lot of lousy tracks on here like "99 Problems", which Jay-Z took from and made his own version of it for 2003's The Black Album.