Joint Contrast

By – TimS

Def Poetry Jam was the definitive example of the world of slam poetry. Sometimes the performances were amazing in an otherworldly sense and others were recycled pretentious garbage.

You know the formula… Start off slow, build to a crescendo, repeat your signature line three times and finish with a slow…stuttered….pace. Like hip-hop or any other lyrically-driven form of music, the performers that are brilliant obviously standout from the rest. Philadelphia’s Black Ice was one of the standouts on that show.

He spoke with melody, accentuated his tone with powerful ease and structured his words in a way that they were able to carry the weight of the subject matter effortlessly. I remember being blown away by his performances but I wasn’t quite sure how his style would translate onto record. The most famous slam poet is Saul Williams. His music, much like himself and his poetry, is very eclectic, so you never expected a certain style from him therefore you were simply rewarded with what you got. Black Ice on the other hand is deeply rooted in straight forward hip-hop, so his debut album is a hip-hop album.

Let me step back from that statement. Black Ice’s album The Death Of Willie Lynch is to hip-hop what Gil-Scott Heron’s albums were to Jazz. Does that intrigue you? It should.

The album came out in 2006 and even I just recently came across it. I stop short of calling it a genius effort because there are a few occurrences when he tries to be a rapper instead of the poet he is and that simply is not what he is meant to be. Those songs come across very contrived. But when he keeps it simple and within the style he perfected and combines that with properly matched musical backdrops, then the Gil-Scott comparison I made earlier is right on point.

When so many people are trying to “keep it real” this cat keeps it right. He pulls no punches while steadily pulling cards. From parenting and the music industry, to race and sex, to the disrupting nature of a corrupt society – he speaks on all of it – but most importantly he sounds fly as fuck while he does the speaking.

So next time you’re at the record store or on , skip over the Trasher Roth album and say M.I. Yay No to Rick Ross and pick up The Death Of Willie Lynch by Black Ice. If you have Trasher Roth’s album proceed to punch yourself in the face and then hand the CD to the nearest white girl so she can have two copies and therefore be twice as fucking retarded as you are.