“You do not know me, silly / You disown me, dude,” Ice-T growls on 1988’s hip-hop gang treatise “Colors.” The Afrika Islam-produced music, the title observe of the movie of the identical title, pushed the Jersey-born, then Los Angeles resident, out of the underground, kickstarting a multi-faceted profession that at present sees Ice sitting on a curved sofa within the shiny, open kitchen/front room of her dwelling in Edgewater, New Jersey, with daughter Chanel’s largely pink toys neatly stacked close by.
Nowadays, followers of his music are used to seeing the rapper-turned-actor in mainstream commercials who could be too scared to deliver him again in time. OG Ice-T would not have been caught dropping a shilling on Cheerios (Ice teaches yoga); Tide (chef Gordon Ramsay, “the chilly calls” the ice); or GEICO (ice on the lemonade stand). But if the leap from gangster to gladhander wasn’t a part of a grasp plan, it would not be that far off.
“First of all, folks do not know who you might be,” he explains of his early profession. “The neighborhood is aware of it, however the folks do not. So you must make him perceive that you’re a severe particular person. Before we will have any enjoyable, you must perceive that I’m not solely humorous, proper? So now folks meet me. They say, “You’re variety.” I say, “Well, you are not my enemy.” There is one other ice. You do not wish to meet him.’ “
Today’s Ice-T – within the month earlier than the US election and earlier than the demise of one-time aide Quincy Jones – speaks eloquently about each subjects. As along with his Harley-Davidson-riding father-in-law, assembly Presidents Clinton (“That son of a bitch was charming as hell”) and Trump (earlier than the primary presidency, “his character alone is a bit of shit to me” ), and the Constitution, earlier than joyfully bursting into the refrain of the New Radicals music he hopes to cowl, “we solely get what we give.”
It’s a break day from enjoying 66-year-old NYPD detective/sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC sequence “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” a job he is performed for twenty-four years. The irony of “Cop Killer” – the music from his heavy steel band Body Count that led to their cut up from Warner Bros. Records – enjoying a cop on TV is misplaced on nobody.
“It’s like they assume it is a snuff file, one thing. Like they really believed I used to be telling folks to go kill cops, which I wasn’t,” Ice-T says, not for the primary time because the observe’s launch in 1992. “I used to be enjoying a personality. But fuck that I name it a badge of honor. Like the quilt of the brand new album “Merciless,” Japan says they do not need it.” (The band’s brand is in blue and purple; it provides connotations to each the Crips and the Bloods, each democratic and Republicans; Ice wears a blue surgical cap, lined in blood and holding a bone noticed in entrance of a blond man in a Ku Klux Klan gown tied to a chair.)
The 12-track file is Body Count’s eighth album, that includes guitarist Ernie C (Cunnigan), Ice and Crenshaw’s highschool buddy, and turntablist/keyboardist Sean E Sean as authentic members. Bassist Vincent Price, drummer Ill Will and rhythm guitarist Juan of the Dead full the lineup with Ice’s son, Little Ice, his center baby, the band’s hype man and backing vocalist since 2016.
“Merciless,” like its predecessors, is filled with sound and fury, signifying a lot of what Ice finds mistaken with the world, his unbiased and clever opinions written aloud, if graphically. The file was affected by the COVID pandemic, however not in the way in which you may think.
“The complete album ‘Merciless’ is predicated on my love for horror movies. The final 4 albums had been the revival of Body Count with Will Putney producing. We went from ‘Manslaughter’ to ‘Blood Lust’ to ‘Carnivore,’” says Ice. “So that is ‘Merciless,’ that is the entire saga. When “Carnivore” got here out final 12 months, we did properly, we gained the Grammy. It’s all sizzling. The label says, “OK, give me one other album.” “
Ice’s voice rises. “We simply launched an album!” I’m like, ‘How the hell am I going to do one other one?’ We by no means obtained to carry out as a result of the album got here out the day COVID hit.” Ice, who takes riffs and songs written by his band and rearranges them to his liking earlier than inventing the lyrics, provides: “People do not perceive that while you make a file, you can placed on 12,13, songs, however you made them 27 that did not make it as a result of they weren’t adequate. You have to begin from scratch.”
With New York on lockdown throughout the Hudson River, Ice, spouse Coco (née Austin) and daughter Chanel spent the COVID lockdown in Jersey. “I used to be watching horror films, serial killers, all this s—. Then, earlier than you already know it, there is a music referred to as “The Purge.” There’s a music referred to as “Psychopath.” I’m watching this new election arising. I’m like, ‘these motherfuckers gang bang.’ All these completely different subjects are coming to thoughts and we’ll make the following file.”
While each steel and hip-hop audiences are fast to criticize posers, Ice-T arrives in good religion along with his rock ‘n’ roll because of his adolescence in Los Angeles, the town the place he moved after his demise of each dad and mom. “When I lived in Los Angeles I had a cousin who thought he was Jimi Hendrix and had the radio on KMET and KLOS. I listened to every little thing from Pink Floyd to the J. Geils Band to Boston to ELO to Mott the Hoople to Edgar Winter,” he remembers. “I began stepping into bands like Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and, in fact, Sabbath. I’ve began to understand darker issues, proper?”
Although few black rock and steel bands stay, Ice-T says Body Count’s preliminary purpose was “to search out an viewers to play for therefore Ernie might play his guitar.” Ernie C and the late drummer Beatmaster V started their skilled careers with Ice-T’s 1987 debut studio album for Sire, “Rhyme Pays.” “We used the Sabbath refrain from ‘War Pigs’, nevertheless it was stay drums, Beatmaster V. Then I did “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” (1989). Ernie performed on it. At the time, hip-hop was very sample-based. But a inventive spark was ignited when Ice-T went on tour with Public Enemy. He noticed “youngsters moshing to ‘Bring the Noise’ and ‘(Welcome to the) Terrordome.’
“I feel, ‘We’ll take the punk sensibility of Suicidal (Tendencies),’ which already had a gangster really feel,” Ice-T says, emotional on the reminiscence. “I stated, ‘We’re going to take the pace of Slayer and the upcoming doom of Black Sabbath, combine them collectively, and I’m going to sing the identical issues I sing about in rap. But I will not kidnap him. I’ll bark it. I name it ‘barking’ as a result of I used to be listening to New York hardcore, like Madball and bands like that. They’re not singing. I am unable to sing like Journey, however yeah, this vocal supply shouldn’t be out of my league.’ So I stated, “Let’s go.” “
More than 30 years later, Body Count is not brief on concepts for heavy riffs or equally heavy lyrical subject material. The new music “Do or Die” would not come from his horror film binge; It’s the frontman’s tackle weapons. Ice-T shouldn’t be essentially in favor of weapons, quite the opposite, the previous Army infantryman clarifies: “I stroll right into a room and nobody has a gun, OK. But if I stroll into the room and somebody has a gun, I need a gun. I do not wish to be the man with the butter knife.
Thanks to his frequent sense way of living, folks inform Ice-T that he must be in politics. The ex-gangster’s reply? “I obtained out of crime. I’m on a soapbox. I can say regardless of the fuck I need. I just about stated every little thing I wished to say. I feel in my story, you possibly can have a look at Ice-T and say, “Ice-T did some loopy issues…” But I doubt you discover something I did silly.
The father of three and husband of twenty-two years denies having any secrets and techniques. “I’ve by no means been to any of Diddy’s events; It’s not my scene. Honestly, I got here from a lot drama and chaos that after I lastly had an opportunity to get out of it… I do not stroll in New York anymore. I do not break the regulation. I do not do it,” he provides, “as a result of I did it each day. I used to be within the deep finish and will have gotten life in jail. I’ve been so blessed and so fortunate. if I did one thing unlawful, if I lied to somebody, if I did one thing loopy, I feel I’d die. I feel I’d endure Instant Karma.”
Even elder statesman Ice-T agrees to now not converse to younger folks. “You need to embrace your evolution and perceive that the torch have to be handed. As Chuck D informed me, “At this level, in case you’re not having enjoyable, you’ve got performed all of this for nothing.” I feel what we did,” he concludes, “was onerous work. We have performed sufficient to alter the world. To me, Barack Obama was a hip-hop president. He was the president of the youngsters who voted for him, who grew up with us. Those white youngsters did not exist earlier than hip-hop, you already know? We created a wave of younger white individuals who weren’t racist.”
And whereas he is comfortable to “speak shit” to his longtime followers through “Merciless,” he says, “we have performed our half. It’s time for youths to do their half. We want a brand new younger EP. A brand new younger Ice-T. Because now I’m sorry, however I’m the previous man. He’s comfortable to nonetheless maintain – and cross – the road, whereas understanding that he isn’t influencing younger folks “like a 21-year-old or younger particular person would if he stated so. It hits them tougher as a result of they’re their friends.
That’s to not say {that a} Body Count present is something however raucous or defiant, Ice-T brings the noise and depth along with his equally pumped-up highschool OGs to the band. “When I play a music, the viewers goes again to the day they heard it for the primary time. And then so as to execute it correctly, I’ve to return to that second after I wrote ‘Colors,’” he says. “So now I’m a 16-year-old child on a stage, gangbanging, as a result of to carry out it correctly, I’ve to get into that place. So music is the fountain of youth.”
