4. Vanilla Ice
Oh gosh. It was the ‘U Can’t Touch This’ effect again, but this felt a bit more detailed because I bought the album. I bought Vanilla Ice’s album, and the words were on the back of it, on the sleeve. The lyrics for all of the songs were there, actually. So I learnt a lot of them and I really thought, "Wow, this is like a better version of MC Hammer, a more street version. Even though the man’s white, this is definitely cooler and the video is sick." I definitely learnt all the words to that; it was a cooler rap to say and because I was growing up a little bit now – I was around 12, 13 – and I was kind of understanding the coolness of certain terminologies used. It was also worlds apart from my own, but I still enjoyed rapping Vanilla Ice’s words.
Because I had a stereo by then, I used to be in and out of the record shops looking for albums. I had MC Hammer’s album, and I think we had MTV at the time as well, so when I saw the video, I thought, "Yeah, that’s what I need, I need to find that song" and he had a whole album out, so I just bought it, took it home and just learnt it. Learnt the album. I blame these songs for me making music because I felt like they provided the tools for me to, not necessarily be creative, but just understand the structures of music: where the raps go, where the choruses go, where the intros go. Because I was mimicking these songs, I was subconsciously taking in their structures. All of these songs had something in common with each other, whether that was a catchy chorus or standout melodies. The instrumentals on all these songs as well – I liked them and I could just listen to them. They were contagious. I didn’t learn my style from them but I did learn the inner workings of a structured song.
