Antony Holmes
6
December 22:12
Rap Tracks
This week my investigative journalism eye trawled the sum of mankind's knowledge of the world to investigate yet another issue pertinent to the zeitgeist.Fans of gangsta rap might remember with fond reverie the heyday of music scene during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. One the biggest proponents of the genre and arguably one its most influential and commercially successful artists is Ice-T (pictured below).
Ice-T, da man
Ice-T has notched up many hit records most notably the infamous "Cop Killer" and has also dabbled in acting though with somewhat less success. All this aside however, the most interesting facet to the Ice-T story is his slightly curious name. Where did it come from? What inspired him to come up with this tag?
Some say Ice-T was influenced by and takes his name from Iceberg Slim, an African American pimp-turned-author. Others say his name is also a pun on iced tea. I think both of these are spurious at best and I have come up with a much more innovative theory.
It cannot have escaped most readers' attention that the state owned German railway corporation Deutsche Bahn operates one of the most efficient rail services in Europe. The flagship of their fleet are the InterCity Express high speed trains serving major principle European cities. The first generation of these trains were designated ICE 1, the second ICE 2 and so on and so forth. During 1998 a tilting version of the trains was introduced classified ICE-T (that sounds familiar). My unique theory therefore suggests that Ice-T is in fact an ardent rail fanatic who was so impressed with German high speed train technology he felt compelled to name himself after his favourite piece of equipment and his name has nothing to do with his background or the formative stages of his life.
ICE-T baby
There a couple of loose ends in my theory that need to be tied up however such as how he was using the name Ice-T some ten years before these trains were put into service but once I've ironed out these small details my idea will be water tight.
The flip side of my argument is that Deutsche Bahn were so impressed with Ice-T's contribution to world music that they thought they would honour him with his own brand of high speed trains for that ultimate bling status symbol. The only logical conclusion I can draw from this gesture is that Ice-T somehow manages to embody all of the qualities associated with high speed mass transportation systems of the late 20th century. Rock n' roll.
More hard hitting investigative journalism coming soon.
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