stop, collaborate and listen...

Admit it...

You know the lyric. You wanted to be "rollin' in your 5.0 with the rag top down so your hair can blow..." You actually listened to the song when it came on the radio and watched the video on MTV (when they still played music).

I was with "Gabe" (for lack of a better name) at a watering hole watching sports highlights and we heard the beginnning notes to this infamous song. Something came over me. I proceeded to recite all - and I mean ALL - the lyrics, complete with some dance moves. I think Gabe was, well, impressed wouldn't be the word I'd use. Frightened would be more like it.

Perhaps I should have been embarassed that I knew all the lyrics. Strangely, I wasn't.

Circa 1990, Vanilla Ice was somewhat a breath of fresh air. Prior to the "Ice Ice Baby" phenomenon, the only white rapper-esque artist was the Beastie Boys. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the Beasties to this day and they introduced us to the "rock-rap" angle. But Vanilla - at this point in musical history anyway - showed us that a white guy could perform rap AND hip-hop, or at least hip-hop as white folks knew it. Love it or leave it, Vanilla Ice did impact the scope of music in the early 1990s and dare I say, helped bring hip-hop into mainstream culture.

I almost wanted play my "To The Extreme" CD when I got home. Emphasis on the word almost. Yes, I still own the CD. For some unexplainable reason, I can't part with it.

The only thing that frightened me in this event was the following: I can't remember what I ate for dinner last Thursday, yet apparently I have ample brain storage for song lyrics of the early 90s.

Word to your mother...