Ice-T (1958—)

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Ice-T (1958—)

Releasing his first track, "The Coldest Rapper," in 1983, Ice-T became Los Angeles's first rap artist. He has since become one of America's most outspoken rappers, boasting a violent past in which he claims to have been shot twice. Indeed, his name was inspired by former pimp and best-selling author Iceberg Slim. Ice-T recalled in his book The Ice-T Opinion, "He would talk in rhyme—hustler-like stuff—and I would memorize lines. People in school would always ask me to recite them." Ice-T's experiences as a gang member provided the material for four albums in three years. Although the first rapper to have warning stickers placed on his album sleeves, Ice-T emerged as a voice for dispossessed black youth. He went on to become an institution on the West Coast, running his own record company, Rhythm Syndicate.

Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow in Newark, New Jersey. Following his parents' death he moved to Los Angeles and attended Crenshaw High School in South Central L.A. His journey to the big time was anything but smooth. He made several records and appeared in three hip-hop films, Rappin' (1985), Breakin' (1984), and Breakin' II, without any notable success. It wasn't until a few years later that he signed a record deal with Sire Records, releasing his debut album Rhyme Pays in 1987. While most of the album's tracks dealt with the familiar topics of sex and women (for example, "I Love Ladies" and "Sex"), two stood out in particular: "6 in the Morning" and "Squeeze the Trigger." These tracks were to define the subject matter of Ice-T's later hardcore rapping: living in the ghetto, street violence, criminal activity, and survival. He stated, "I try to walk the edge. I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear." Indeed, it was the latter track that inspired actor/director Dennis Hopper to ask Ice-T to contribute the title song to his movie Colors (1988), a brutal depiction of gang culture in L.A.

Following the success of the track "Colors," Ice-T released his second album Power (1988). The record depicts an L.A. cityscape that would not be out of place on the set of a blaxploitation movie: pimps, hookers, hit men, cars, and drugs. This was backed up by wahwah guitar riffs and samples borrowed from Curtis Mayfield giving the album the sound of 1970s funk. On "I'm Your Pusherman," Ice-T lifted a track wholesale from Mayfield's Superfly.

Ice-T's third album, Freedom of Speech (1989), seemed to demarcate a shift to an even more militant stance. The track "Lethal Weapon" recalls Public Enemy's "Miuzi Weighs a Ton," adopting a violent persona with lines such as "I'm a nigger on the trigger/Madder than a pit bull." Ice-T still had not discarded his earlier pimp/player image, which is evidenced in his fourth album Original Gangster (O.G.) (1991). The title of the album coined a new phrase that entered the rap lexicon, and the album as a whole was placed alongside some of rap's best recordings.

Ice-T recorded two more albums, Home Invasion (1993) and Born Dead (1994), as a solo artist and appeared in several films, the most notable being his part as a cop in New Jack City (1991). In addition to his solo performances, Ice-T also formed a spinoff metal/hardcore band called Body Count that released an eponymous album in 1992. The inclusion of the notorious track "Cop Killer" ensured further headlines and earned Ice-T the number-two slot on the FBI National Threat list.

As Ice-T continued to appear in films and on television throughout the 1990s, the controversy he incited receded. His gangster persona was copied and perfected by many other West Coast "gangsta" rappers such as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre. Nonetheless, it could be argued that without Ice-T these rappers would not have become a part of popular culture in America, for he was the first West-Coast rapper to gain respect in rap's birthplace, New York City.

—Nathan Abrams