ICE-T

One of the original gangsta rappers, Ice-T helped pave the way for hip-hop to evolve from its break-of-dawn party roots into a more visceral portrayal of the harsh realities faced by Black Americans throughout the heated late '80s, '90s, and beyond. From the start, he had a blunt but always articulate lyrical style with unflinching directness on issues of race, discrimination, social injustice, and other charged political topics, balanced out with the occasional outburst of irreverent humor or obscene storytelling. Early albums like 1988's Power and 1989's The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! quickly ramped up in their intensity and aggression, and 1991's O.G. Original Gangsta introduced new project Body Count, an unironic thrash metal band fronted by Ice-T. Body Count would be the focus of a media frenzy for their 1992 song "Cop Killer," an unfiltered celebration of striking back at racist police violence that was so raw the band was dropped by their label over the ensuing controversy. This attention made Body Count all the more popular, and Ice-T spent the '90s splitting his time between solo rap records and fronting the metal band. As the years went on, he became more of a public figure than a musician, achieving a higher celebrity status with his film and television acting and also authoring several books. He never completely closed the door on music, however, and continued to regularly tour and release new albums with Body Count, while also sporadically issuing new solo rap projects of his own such as the 2023 collection The Legend of Ice-T: Crime Stories.

Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow in Newark, New Jersey. and moved to Los Angeles at the age of 12. He became obsessed with rap in his teenage years, beginning to write rhymes of his own while attending Crenshaw High School in South Central Los Angeles. Ice-T took his name from Iceberg Slim, a pimp who wrote novels and poetry which a young Ice-T would memorize and recite for friends and classmates. After he left high school, he recorded several independent singles in the early '80s, in a musical style somewhere between electro and early hip-hop, but with lyrics that were already explicit and shocking for their time. He also appeared in the low-budget hip-hop films Rappin', Breakin', and Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo as he was trying to establish a career.

Ice-T finally landed a major-label record deal with Sire Records in 1987, releasing his debut album, Rhyme Pays. On the record, he is supported by DJ Aladdin and producer Afrika Islam, who helped create the rolling, spare beats and samples that provided a backdrop for the rapper's charismatic rhymes, which were mainly party-oriented; the record wound up going gold. That same year, he recorded the theme song for Dennis Hopper's Colors, a film about inner-city life in Los Angeles. The song -- also called "Colors" -- was stronger, both lyrically and musically, with more incisive lyrics than anything he had previously released. Ice-T formed his own record label, Rhyme Syndicate (which was distributed through Sire/Warner) in 1988, and released Power. Power was a more assured and impressive record, earning him strong reviews and his second gold record. Released in 1989, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say established him as a true hip-hop superstar by matching excellent abrasive music with fierce, intelligent narratives, and political commentaries, especially about artistic censorship. This album also began Ice's dabbling with mixing rap and rock styles, with some songs including live, guitar-heavy instrumentation and Alternative Tentacles' CEO and punk godfather Jello Biafra providing guest narration on multiple tracks.

Two years later, Ice-T starred in the film New Jack City and recorded its theme song "New Jack Hustler." The song was included on his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster, which became his most successful album to date. O.G. also featured a metal track called "Body Count" recorded with Ice-T's band of the same name. Ice-T took the band out on tour that summer, as he performed on the first Lollapalooza tour. The tour set-up increased his appeal with both alternative music fans and middle-class teenagers. The following year, the rapper decided to release an entire album with the band, also called Body Count.

Body Count proved to be a major turning point in Ice-T's career. Because of the track "Cop Killer" -- where he sang from the point-of-view of a police murderer -- the record ignited a national controversy; it was protested by the NRA and police activist groups. Time Warner Records initially supported Ice-T, yet they refused to release his new rap album, Home Invasion, because of the record cover. Ice-T and the label parted ways by the end of the year. Home Invasion was released on Priority Records in the spring of 1993. Somewhere along the way, Ice-T had begun to lose most of his original hip-hop audience; now he appealed primarily to suburban white teens. In 1994, he wrote a book and released the second Body Count album, Born Dead.

In the summer of 1996, Ice-T released his first rap album since 1993, Return of the Real, and followed it in 1999 with 7th Deadly Sin. Ice-T then returned to acting, taking a role on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit playing, ironically, a police officer. Acting became his central focus from that point on, with a regular gig on Law & Order, several roles in movies, and even a reality television series. His eighth solo rap record Gangsta Rap was released in 2006, and new generations of fans discovered his earlier work through various compilations and greatest-hits sets. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, Ice-T became more of a celebrity presence than a working musician, but he still maintained the musical aspect of his fame. Body Count toured and recorded often, and Ice made guest appearances on tracks from Ice Cube, E-40, Upon A Burning Body, Megadeth, Kool Keith, and many others. Instead of studio albums of new material, Ice-T stuck primarily to these cameo appearances and repackaging older material, and in 2023 he released The Legend of Ice-T: Crime Stories, a lengthy compilation of his storytelling-centered songs that included five previously unreleased archival tracks. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi