Song of the Week #6
There are so many ways I could try and introduce Body Count for this Song of the Week, from the tongue-in-cheek themes of so many of their hits, to some of the spoken interludes on the albums, to trying to explain ‘Institutionalized 2014’, but instead, it’s probably more fitting to say how I first came across Body Count:
“Those stupid motherfuckers, they let us through customs again.” Ice-T said into the mic with a childish grin, mere seconds after the band received rapturous applause for their live rendition of Slayer’s Raining Blood. From that moment on, I was sold by whatever ‘this’ was, and everything it was meant to be.
Ice-T is such a divisive figurehead that crosses over 2 musical genres with near identical devil may care attitude, despite the fact that these days he’s more affiliated with other Dads in their 60s that play Call of Duty, rather than with the Crips in the gang wars of Los Angeles. For any of you that happened to see the “Lemmy” documentary on the late iconic Motörhead frontman, Ice-T’s small appearance whilst talking about Lemmy where he’s talking in his house in front of a painting of himself sat on a regal throne wielding a chalice with a king’s gown draped by his feet, tells you more about him as a person than I ever could. As an added bonus I’ve attached a snapshot of this below.
As cringeworthy to some as they might be, Body Count actually have a solid back catalogue of songs from their 1st album way back in ‘92 to Carnivore which was released a few months back (March 2020), and I fully encourage you at the very least to check out either the plethora of cover songs on their albums, or to stick an album on full - maybe Manslaughter or the Self Titled ‘Body Count’. The song I’ve chosen is from the latter, called There Goes the Neighbourhood, and mostly talks about the lack of black bands and general diversity of the rock and metal scene back in the 90s (or as much as Ice-T can talk sensibly about any political issue). It’s worth a listen because it’s catchy if nothing else - Enjoy!
