EWA100 - #88. Ice-T - 6 'N The Mornin'

88. Ice-T - 6 'N The Mornin' (Sire/Warner Brothers. 1987. From the LP Rhyme Pays)

Mike Dikk: This song sounds so OLD. It was originally released in 1986 as a B-Side to Ice-T’s first single, and even by 1986 standards, it sounds old. I would have guessed 1983 or something. Plus, the reverb on the vocals not only makes this sound more dated, but it also gives off the feeling that this was originally recorded in a local TV studio for a Public Access channel. I can just imagine a young Ice-T now in washed out colors on some glittery stage 6 inches off the ground rapping about smacking bitches in his high pitched old school nasally while a toll free number scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
Actually, I already directed an imaginary music video for this song in my head. Do you remember that scene in the movie Pump Up The Volume where there’s some white kids with a boombox rocking out to Ice-T’s “Let’s Get Butt Naked And Fuck”? Well, in my imaginary music video that song is replaced with “6 ‘N Tha Mornin’” and that scene is cut down to a three second loop that plays throughout the duration of the song. Then I add another white kid into the foreground doing the jive walk that Rog from What’s Happenin’ does when he gets a job with the newspaper. The kid is wearing oversized sunglasses and a backwards neon hat too.
To this day, I still imagine that this is what rap music sounds like to all parents: Shitty, barbaric, badly recorded, simplistic and all about Guns and Woman Violence.

Raven Mack: Used to play this tape constantly, so much so that the letters on the side of the cassette wore off from it being handled. And it's funny, because when my dad was home, I'd play it sort of low because this IS what he imagined rap music to be like. I'm sure it's a common theme amongst lower class members of the Expert Whiteboy Analysis sub-culture, but pops wouldn't have been too down with me listening to shit like Ice-T, even though you gotta think it's a step in a better direction from shit like Slayer and Kreator.
For as dated and corny as this song sounded, this was the first real song that painted detailed pictures of west coast thug life. That's why, in 1986, when the west coast was barely heard of, Ice-T was doing tours on the east coast.
I still love this song though. Simplistic is sometimes looked down upon, so that you get corny showtune beats and over-analyzed lyrics like that Lupe Fiasco CD, and people think it's great because it's got string section samples and shit. I am down with a song sometimes sounding like a dude beat the beat out on a flipped over five-gallon bucket while his buddy rapped in the corner of the bathroom.

Download: Ice-T - 6 'N The Mornin'

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