Raekwon: The [opening skit] was something me and Ghost really wanted to stress, because around that time we was really buying Clarks left and right. We had bumped into a Chinese nigga who could dye shit. That was Ghost’s man. And we was just runnin’ back and forth to that nigga every time we wanted to go get some shoes. Back then, we was into shoes hard. We wanted to wear Clarks because the shits was comfortable and nobody in the game was fuckin’ with ’em. So you know, we’d be going to dye shit, and that’s where Ghost came up with the idea to slice ’em. I was the solid-color nigga; he was the striped nigga. We started coming up with different flavors. So he was letting niggas know, “I wanna get a pair of Clarks like, I’m a murder ’em!”
When I rhymed to “Glaciers” it wasn’t even to that beat. It was the drum part of that beat that I rhymed to. That day, when I went home, I didn’t like my rhyme. Everybody else kept stressing they liked my rhyme. But I didn’t. RZA was like, “Don’t worry about it. Go home, go get some rest, you tired, you buggin’.” I was like, Fuck that. When I come back tomorrow, I’m changing that shit.
When I came back, it was like the shit was a whole new different beat with the drums under it. He made Blue Raspberry hit certain notes. He’d have her scream, go crazy. That shit’s nothing but an AK festival with all the screaming. I took it like he had a shooting range with a bunch of Iraq niggas and just having a festival.
Blue Raspberry: One night, I was just at the studio and I was playing around on the microphone, singing Patti LaBelle’s “Over the Rainbow.” I was with no music, no nothing. I was sitting there, just singing. And when I got to the end like, [sings] “Why then, oh why c-a-a-n’t I?” RZA recorded it. And that’s where he put it, in “Glaciers of Ice.”
RZA: The Clarks skit is totally how Ghost is. He recorded the skit, I think we was in the car. I had a portable DAT. I made everybody get one, ’cause no telling where we gonna be at when an idea hits. Put it under your bed with your bitch, whatever.
Ghostface: We was in the car one day, driving around with the DAT machine with microphone. And we just started talking shit about how we’re gonna do it this summer with the Clarks. The dying was something I was doing already. I’m an inventor. Niggas can’t fuck with me when it comes to style. Only nigga that is right there with me is probably Slick Rick. Other than that, I’m boss.

Source: XXL Mag

Mobb Deep’s Prodigy in his autobiography My Infamous Life describes how he crashed his car whilst listening to the track on his way to the airport.

The next morning, I got up early and was weaving in and out of lanes on the Long Island Expressway blasting Raekwon’s “Glaciers of Ice.” Flying through traffic, I tapped the back of another car and Lil Nigga did a 360 spin in the middle of the highway. Buses and sixteen-wheeler trucks were coming at me full speed but the higher powers were on my side. My car spun around and landed safely on the shoulder of the road and smacked into a concrete wall. My Lil Nigga was destroyed.

… Raekwon’s Purple Tape had me wanting to drive extra fast.