Happy 25th Anniversary to Ras Kass’ debut album Soul on Ice, originally released October 1, 1996.
There was a time in my life where John “Ras Kass” Austin IV was one of my favorite rappers. And there was a time that I counted down the days that his debut album Soul on Ice would be released. When, 25 years ago, I was finally able to purchase the long-player, it should have been a moment of hip-hop nirvana for me. The reality was a little complicated.
My initial status as a Ras Kass superfan came when I first really began spending time on the Internet. I first really got involved in the whole online community thing in Fall 1995, at the beginning of my junior year in college. I’d frequent Usenet-based hip-hop news groups, like alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop, back when they were centers of hip-hop discussion. Through them, I got into tape trading, seeking out unreleased material and rare radio freestyles. One of the first and most coveted albums that I acquired/discovered were the original demos for Ras Kass’ Soul on Ice.
I had already been familiar with the Watts and Carson, CA resident through his limited output in 1994. He had killed his verse on “Come Widdit,” a collaboration with Ahmad and Saafir on the Street Fighter soundtrack (1994). Later, the “Won’t Catch Me Runnin’” & “Remain Anonymous” cassette single blew my mind. When coupled with his fiery verse on the “Wake Up Show Theme Song” (which I eventually heard via tape trading), Ras Kass looked like a bona fide “can’t miss” artist.
Ras Kass started his career signed to PatchWerk Recordings, a record label associated with PatchWerk Recording Studios in Atlanta. Though now the studio is known for being the place where artists like OutKast, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Lil Jon, and dozens of others recorded platinum hits, in 1993 it was a place where Ras Kass could record his demo. Atlanta Falcons Offensive Tackle Bob Whitefield established the studio and the record label ostensibly to advance high school friend Ras Kass’ recording career.
Once completed, the label distributed the “Remain Anonymous” 12-inch. It was a potent tour de force by Ras, a convincing statement that rappers without a major record label deal could catch as much wreck as signed emcees. After the 12-inch began receiving attention in Los Angeles and around the globe, he reissued the single with the smooth “Won’t Catch Me Runnin’.”
Ras seemed like a five-tool player of an emcee: an intellectual rapper, well versed in history and philosophy, who could write battle raps with the best of them. He had a smooth flow and possessed a subtly commanding voice. Furthermore, he was a part of the Western HemisFear crew, a posse of similarly skills-oriented emcees and producers, whose ranks included Vooodu, Mean Green, Mykil Miers, and Bird. At the time, Ras Kass seemed destined for hip-hop’s Mt. Rushmore.
For the better part of a year, I listened to the muffled sixth or seventh generation dub of the unreleased version of Soul on Ice. I dubbed it again countless times and sent it to friends back home in the Bay Area. I was ecstatic when I heard that Priority Records had signed Ras Kass in early 1996. It seemed like a good fit, as the label made its name putting out artists like N.W.A and Ice Cube, and seemed to let its artists release uncompromised versions of the music.
It didn’t quite work out that way for Ras Kass and Soul on Ice. This was the mid-1990s, and labels had figured out that rap could make them lots of money. They perceived every rapper with a modicum of appeal as potentially the next Snoop, 2Pac, or Biggie Smalls. Hence, Priority did end up pushing for more radio friendly material in favor of some of the rougher, more uncompromised material Ras Kass had originally recorded.
As a result, some of the tracks I really enjoyed, like “Everything I Love,” “High IQ,” “Core Audience,” “Capital R-A-S,” the Western HemisFear posse cut “Take a Deep Breath,” and oddly both “Won’t Catch Me Runnin’” & “Remain Anonymous,” didn’t make the cut. In their place was material geared towards commercial viability, and it turned out to be a mixed bag when it comes to quality. As a result, the Priority Records version of Soul on Ice reached for greatness, but couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Anything Goes,” the album’s first single, sounds a lot like a re-working of “Everything I Love,” as some of the lyrics are the same, and Bird switches out an Isley Brothers sample for a piece of Al B. Sure!’s “Ooh, This Love Is So.” Though I was initially put off by it, the song has grown on me over the years. Ultimately, I still prefer “Everything I Love.”
“Miami Life” is a stronger track. It was released as a single in order to promote the film The Substitute (Priority also spearheaded the soundtrack) and carries vague allusions to the eminently forgettable Miami-set flick. Mostly, Ras kicks clever references to the drug game. “Marinatin’” is out of place on Soul On Ice as it’s not quite the sum of its parts. The beat, produced by Battlecat, is expertly-crafted chill-out music, allowing Ras to describe a day of just chilling with his homies, drinking, and pursuing female attention. It shoots for an Alkaholiks meets Domino vibe, but just misses.
The best material on Soul on Ice tend to be the tracks that originally appeared on the demo. Ras weaves Biblical and religious imagery over a majestic track by Bird on “On Earth As It Is…,” where he sounds like he’s catching the Holy Ghost as he flows, rapping, “The hereafter is after / You hear the HemisFear trinity raps rapture your Babylon vinyl / And thou shalt not worship false idols / Just like David guillotined Philistines, even God is homicidal.”
“Etc.” is a straight bar-heavy lyrical explosion by Ras. It originally appeared as the B-side to “Remain Anonymous,” and became a favorite in the LA Underground scene, especially getting played at the Unity hip-hop events. Ras transforms his lungs and esophagus into automatic weapons, effortlessly spraying two verses of clever lines and complex flows over an understated track by Bird. Ras is completely locked in as he raps, “See we been burning idiots with lyrical syphilis since E.S.T. was Ackniculous / The Nickle-slick meticulous ventriloquist / When I throws my voice over the Western HemisFear / While my peers step over a Trail of Tears.”
“Reelishymn” is my favorite song on the album and likely the best song Ras Kass ever recorded. It’s a contemplative, swirling meditation on what it means to be an artist. On the track, Ras grapples with the struggle of working to be a “true emcee” while making material that appeals to as large of an audience as possible. He sounds conflicted as he deduces, “Make a radio hit? Headz criticize it / Underground classic? Nobody buys it / So, rap is fucked and everything blowing up sounds redundant / But money talks and bullshit does 9 flat in the 100m.” Ultimately, he concludes, “I'm living a life idealistically, principle over profit / But realistically good intentions are microscopic to fat pockets.” I’d guess that he wrote this song about his struggles with Priority, but this song predates his record deal by a good many months.
“Nature of the Threat” is one of the best-known tracks on Soul on Ice, notorious for its scope. Over a dark and gothic beat by Vooodu, Ras creates a nearly eight-minute epic on the history of Western Civilization, racism, and, well, white people. He’s said that he spent approximately six months researching the song, and wrote it in about two hours. What’s more, Ras recites his raps nearly nonstop, with no hooks and barely any pauses or breaks.
The song has proved fairly incendiary over the years, as near the end, Ras declares, “Understand all whites must be perceived as potential predators.” The sentiments may seem harsh, but bear in mind that much of Western contemporary media still portrays the Black population of the world in a similar light. Also, given the fact that the United States is five years removed from electing Donald Trump to the highest office in the land, and racist caricatures like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene to congress not even a year ago, Ras Kass’ distrust of the white population of this country has merit.
Not all of “Nature of the Threat” has aged well, as the instances of homophobia are still pretty glaring. But overall, the song is an impressive undertaking. Few artists have tried anything as ambitious.
With the heaviness of material like “Nature of the Threat,” a track like “Drama” can seem like a strange inclusion. The Bird-produced track features Ras Kass pursuing the opposite sex over a flute loop sampled from Hubert Laws’ “Trying To Get That Feeling Again.” The song also features Soul on Ice’s only guest verse, as Coolio, who at one time served as Ras’ manager, delivers a solid enough 16 bars. Coolio had already featured Ras Kass on his Gangsta’s Paradise (1995) album, and would work with him in the future as well.
Of the “new” songs recorded for Soul on Ice, “Sonset” is the strongest. Most rappers of the mid 1990s era would like to pretend that the West Coast/East Coast “beef” never happened, but it definitely was a thing. The vast majority of the “war” was too stupid for words, but “Sonset” is one of the few good things to come out of it.
It certainly helps that Ras Kass comes from a place of respect, acknowledging the importance of East Coast hip-hop, but objecting to the sense of superiority and entitlement that some East Coast artists exhibited. He ponders, “So why these n****s acting like since they live in the state / that rap originates hey automatically all-time greats? / It takes classic material to make phat shit / Not proof of New York residence and an accent.” The track ends with a massive scratch exhibition by DJ Shortkut of the Invisible Skratch Picklz, who puts a serious hurting on the two turntables.
For all the Rakim and Nas-esque cool that Ras emits through most of Soul on Ice, “The Evil That Men Do” is one of the album’s most soul-baring entries. Ras describes his origin story in all of its ugly, complicated glory. He recounts his rocky upbringing and his feelings of shame being born Black. He grapples with his Catholic faith, the birth of his daughter, and his incarceration for vehicular manslaughter and DUI. Ras’ tale is obviously quite bleak, but serves as a testament to his own strength at being able to move beyond these difficulties and have a successful recording career.
I’ve always believed Ras Kass came around at the exact wrong time for him to flourish like he deserved. Had he arrived a few years earlier, he really would have been regarded as the West Coast Nas. A couple of years later, and he could have put out his album independently and not had to deal with major label politics. If he’d come along in the late ’00s, he could have been one of the members of the Black Hippy collective or even akin to Kendrick Lamar. Over recent years, Ras Kass has called himself “Kendrick before Kendrick,” which isn’t an inaccurate statement.
Ras Kass’ experiences with the record industry have cast an unfortunate shadow, especially his dealings with Priority Records. I’d liken his time with them to Ghostface Killah’s stint on Def Jam Records: a seemingly great match on paper that never reached its full potential because the label never quite figured out what to do with him. The dissolution of Ras Kass’ relationship with Priority is long and complicated, and would take many more words to untangle. Suffice to say that the label never realized and acted upon his potential.
A quarter of a century later, I couldn’t definitively tell you if Soul on Ice is a triumph or missed opportunity or both. I know I listened to the album a hell of a lot during the mid to late 1990s, and I can say that I enjoyed re-listening to it quite a bit in order to write this tribute.
But I also feel like the album fell short of what it should have been. It’s a complex album that allowed Ras to be true to himself, while also giving what he thought Priority Records wanted. It deserves both celebration and scrutiny, with an overall great lyrical performance that made Ras Kass your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.
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