Ice-T Earth - the darker side of multiculturalism.

Heavy Metal. Arguably the most prominent post-punk voice of urban discontent among white kids.

Rap. Arguably the single largest voice of urban discontent among black kids, or indeed, any youth culture, ever.

It was always a mere matter of time before the two voices converged in unique duet. The flow of disaffected rhyme and the rhythmic groove of rap/hip-hop might, in theory have bonded perfectly with the aggression and melody of metal...

But rather than produce some heavenly heavy harmony, the dischord is frequently (and obscenely) deafening. I mean, sure, we all like that version of Bring The Noise with Anthrax on, and Walk This Way was fairly significant in pushing rap into the spotlight that had beforehand been solely occupied by Hard White Boy music (even if Run DMC would have been better off just sampling the guitar hook themselves, instead of getting Aerosmith to play it), but for the most part, rap and metal crossover is perhaps the single most compelling argument for permanent racial segregation.

What here shall miss, this blog strive to mend:

(bear with me on this mp3-sharing business: i think you have to left click and save to the hard drive when the pop-up, uh, pops up. Pretty sure you can't right-click>save target as. Sorry!)

Six Feet Under featuring Ice-T - "One Bullet Left"

Oh God. Ice-T is a reasonably easy bloke to respect. He was the first anti-homophobic rapper to position himself squarely within the mainstream, but he also had enough integrity to remove "Cop Killer" from the admittedly awful Body Count record (the token argument against rap/metal crossovers, one which needn't be repeated here), once he realised that the song could never live up to the mainstream controversy that surrounded it.

But come on, man - doing a song with Six Feet Under? A band fronted by a guy who's main claim to fame is that he used to be in Cannibal Corpse? It's like Ice-T woke up one day and decided there wasn't quite enough tedium in his spotted and varied career (evidently he forgot about that film where Rutger Hauer is a priest and Garey Busey is a nigger-hatin', tobacco-chewin', all American hero), and thus decided to record a song with a guy who's trademark is to sing about the multitude of ways there are to make a woman bleed. What's the big deal there anyway? Women bleed like, monthly. They don't need your help, Six Feet Under.

Anyway, the song is hilarious. The first verse is just normal death metal grunts courtesy of the singer, Chris Barnes, but if you can actually make out the lyrics, you'll be rewarded with gleeful (if nonsensical) promises to "Kill all the haters - they'll never stop their deaths" and to "Reduce their heads with lead".

After a ho-hum chorus, the impressively uncreative rap verse chimes in. Even for Ice-T, the liberal use of "fuck" as line-filler is excellent. This verse appears to tell a convoluted but charming tale about:

1. shooting a man
2. shooting his wife
3. abusing his children
4. calling the police on himself
5. throwing his kids' corpses onto the lawn, and then
6. shooting himself when the cops show up.

Or something. What a day! Anyway, it contains the line "You motherfucking critic-ass bitch motherfuckers", which is ostensibly the greatest piece of literature ever crafted. From God's tongue, to Ice-T's pen, it seems.

Lil' John - Stop Fuckin' Wit Me

Have you ever heard of Lil' John? Me either. Wikipedia informs me that he had a single with Ludacris on it, which is enough to make me think he's reasonably rubbish. I've not heard any songs of his, other than this Rick Rubin-produced wonder. Judging by it's lyrical content, he's sort of similar to that stable of flamboyant, moustache-twirling and theatrically "evil" rappers like Necro and Ill Bill. I guess you could call them the hip-hop equivalent of Six Feet Under.

Anyway, the reason for this travesty's inclusion here is because all melody in this song is derived from samples of Slayer's immortal Raining Blood, one of those songs that you always kind of figure is untouchable. It's a song that prompts the question, "how could you possibly go wrong with this?".

That's a question Lil' John was obviously very eager to answer. Imagine if Megadeth decided to record a cover of Fuck The Police, only instead of doing it faithfully, they do it with manic riffing, double-kick blasting, and Dave Mustaine's nasal warble. That would be preferable to this.

Until next time, kids! Coming soon are articles about the multitude of levels on which Napalm Death's "Scum" record works, and a review of the new Kanye West album.