After Rhyme Pays--which made a splash in the underground but is really an embryonic work--Ice-T really hit his stride with Power. It still showcases a somewhat immature style, however, & the problems here would be mostly reproduced on the followup, before Ice worked out the kinks on his masterpiece, the sprawling O.G. Original Gangster (which I owned on tape, not CD, so I won't cover it in this series).
Like I said when I wrote about his followup The Iceberg, the concepts behind Ice-T's early albums don't get lauded enough. The opening title track considers the implications of different kinds of power--social status, physical violence, sex--before concluding that "money controls the world & that's it." This thread continues in the late-album "High Rollers," where Ice zeroes in on the idea of money=power & discusses the different ways it manifests (bringing politicians' legal hustles into the conversation), before ending on a warning to would-be crooks that the ends don't justify the means. As others have pointed out, Ice's music distinguishes itself from a lot of the nihilistic gangsta rap it inspired by not just focusing on problems, but offering solutions as well. The cautionary moral of "High Rollers" also appears in songs like "Drama" (which starts as a braggadocious storytelling rhyme about committing crimes & develops through escalating levels of "drama" until we end up in the electric chair), the classic Curtis Mayfield-sampling anti-drug PSA "I'm Your Pusher" (where Ice recommends getting high on music instead), & the spoken-word piece "Soul on Ice," where the emcee channels his namesake Iceberg Slim to tell a story of the futility of street fame.
Lyrically speaking, this album is more focused & tighter than the followup (for instance, "The Syndicate" is just as dull as The Iceberg's posse cut, but it only lasts 3 & a half minutes instead of an excruciating 9), but it's less interesting musically. Afrika Islam's beats are mostly NY-influenced uptempo drum machines & sparse synths. We don't get any dark, forward-looking west coast crawls like the followup's "Peel Their Caps Back." The only indication of Ice's hard-rock fixation is a guitar on the Heart-sampling "Personal," whereas the next album would expand on this significantly. There are a few standout beats though, like "Radio Suckers" with its ascending keyboard line in the verse & propulsive Public Enemy sample that acts as the chorus. I also love the lurching synth bass melody that serves as the hook of "Drama." Many of the songs on this album feature what I call the "Ice-T single word chorus," where he intones the title word or phrase in his deep serious voice & it echoes over the instrumental. It's maybe best exemplified in the non-album single "Colors" from the same year, but present here in "Power," "Drama," "The Syndicate," "Personal," & "High Rollers."
The highs on Power may not be as high as those on The Iceberg, but the lows aren't quite as low, & the album is more consistent overall. Each of the first 4 Ice-T records all offer something unique, like "Soul on Ice" here with the spoken-word style he never revisited. O.G. might be my favorite, but you can't really go wrong with any of them.
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