The best thing about
Vanilla Ice is his fearlessness to try new things, fall flat on his face every time in public, not care about what other people think, and then move on to the next exploitable trend. When we last left our hero, he was dealing with other people gasping for their last breath of fame's air on VH1's reality show The Surreal Life and unleashing Hot Sex upon an unsuspecting (if uncaring) public. Fast forward two years later and you find him at it again with
Platinum Underground, touting his career revival on a prime time show, yet another reality series, and chalking another notch on the belt of an already embarrassing career. Through "Survivor"
Vanilla has unleashed his equivalent of
Eminem's "Lose Yourself," the only difference being that
Em's tune is actually good. Based loosely on the
Destiny's Child song, he pontificates his survival through all of the trials and tribulations documented on his VH1 Behind the Music special and the E! True Hollywood Story show. Also, throughout
Platinum Underground he constantly refers to the abusive treatment MTV and others have shown him throughout the years, yet he still insists that he doesn't care about it. If that's the case, why make it the subject of so many rhymes? And it doesn't get any better than on "Mecca & Ice," where he adorns a pseudo-Jamaican accent that is equal parts entertaining and insulting, a common thread that runs through his career to be sure, but this time around it's in unforgivably poor form. On "Trailer Park Mullet Wars," he appeals to the lowest common denominator and brings out the worst in the whole rap-metal genre. The descriptions of how poor this album is from start to finish could result in a thesis-length review. The whole concept behind this record should have been aborted during the early sessions. At 25 tracks in length, this record has more bad spots in it than most and should be avoided unless you are a die-hard
Vanilla fan, in which case, dig in. [A clean version of this record was also issued, mainly for people having objections to strong language.] ~ Rob Theakston