Ice-T’s peculiar collaboration with Black Sabbath
Despite Black Sabbath’s standing as one of the best rock bands of all time, it hasn’t been an easy journey. This isn’t just because of personal reasons, which have led to multiple line-ups in the band, but also because they struggled to capture the energy of their first two albums in a way that continued to excite fans as much as Black Sabbath and Paranoid did.
Their first couple of albums were recorded in quick sessions and predominantly played live because the band was still in its infancy, and labels weren’t willing to invest a lot of money into studio time. This worked in the band’s favour, as those first albums are packed with energy and perfectly highlight Black Sabbath’s raw, unwavering attitude.
After the success of those albums, though, they had all the studio time and resources they could dream of afterwards. It led to an identity crisis where the band tried to be innovative, but it was their straight-up approach that people loved in the first place. They still made some great albums after those first two but never had the same impact. Tony Iommi tried his best to keep making excellent Black Sabbath albums by being open-minded and willing to work with others. For their penultimate album, Forbidden, this came in the form of teaming up with rapper Ice-T.
It makes sense why Tony Iommi would be keen on working with a rapper, given it was during a period when those kinds of collaborations were incredibly popular. Run-DMC had already seen success with their rock-infused rap song ‘Rock Box’, and that success was taken to astronomical heights when they partnered with Aerosmith on ‘Walk This Way’, so why wouldn’t Black Sabbath give it a try?
However, what actually happened was that Iommi was pushed out of the album’s production, and it ended up sounding less and less like a Black Sabbath record. This was only further enhanced when Ice-T brought his guitar player Ernie C into the production process, pushing Iommi to the side.
“Forbidden has been a thorn in my side for years,” said Iommi. “I knew all about Ice-T and that he was good, but I didn’t expect him to bring along his guitar player to produce the album […] When a band knows its sound and exactly what it wants, bringing in an outsider is very disruptive. I found myself on the sidelines. Our whole situation had become so frail.”
Ice T and Ernie C began taking over the whole album to the point that it wasn’t a reflection of Black Sabbath at all. Ice T even had a spoken word passage on ‘Illusion of Power’ but kept talking about potentially contributing more. This led to Tony Martin, Black Sabbath’s singer at the time, not understanding his involvement.
“I know why Ice-T and Ernie were brought in. I mean Aerosmith and Run DMC had had their big hit [‘Walk This Way’],” Martin revealed. “But I wasn’t even certain I would be on the album, because Ice-T was coming in to sing some stuff. When I asked whether that was one or two tracks or more, nobody knew.”
The collab doesn’t go down as one of music’s best, but it is a good example of the innovation in music at the time and how rap was starting to influence other genres.
