*One of the most remarkable multi-hyphenates in the culture is Tracy Lauren Marrow a/k/a Ice-T, the legendary gangsta rap pioneer, the first West Coast rapper to go national, the longest-running male TV actor – not just black actor but actor period, film star, grammy award-winning heavy metal band founder and singer AND last but not least a hubby with one of the longest marriages in the entertainment game.
The icon chops it up with iheart radio personality and EURweb Spotlight host Jazmyn Summers about his life, love, and music.
His journey wasn’t an easy one.
“I’m writing a song right now for Body Count (his heavy metal band) where I’m reflecting back on where I came from,” he shares with EURweb Spotlight. “I was one of the kids in the streets and sometimes the only thing that seems like an opportunity is negative. When I grew up there weren’t even any rappers so the only people that I could look up to, the doctors and the lawyers would move out and all we see are the hustlers, the players, the pimps and the gangsters. And that’s how you see I’m going to get money. One thing about the streets, they don’t require an application You are hired and then you have to earn. I was hanging around kids just like me and we looked at crime as a way to get paid.”
Ice lost his mother to a heart attack when he was in third grade. His dad died when Ice was just 13 years old. The pain of losing both his parents at such a young age translated into toughness he tells Jaz.
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“Being an orphan, I had a chip on my shoulder. I was like, man, why do I get dealt these bad hands man, why is my life so f*cked up? And so I had it out for life but it made me understand there was nobody to fall back on. Sometimes having a family can affect you negatively because there’s always somebody to catch your back if things go wrong. I never had that. That’s why I never got high. Never joined gangs I never did drugs. I never smoked weed. Cause I thought it would compromise my situation. if I hit the ground it was my job to pick me up. I have no brothers or sisters. I have no living relatives. So it’s like I knew that I was on my own.”
He became a jewelry thief to make money and as in everything he tries, he excels at it.
“I never got caught,” he reveals to Jaz. “I was lucky God looks out for fools and children. And I think that the fact that I was so unaware of how easily I could have got murdered or how easily somebody else could have got murdered or how easily I could have been spending life (in prison), I was just taking those risks Now looking back on it, it was insane. The biggest licks we were hitting was a few hundred thousand at a time. just basically walking in the jewelry store with sledgehammers. Eventually, I tapped out cause my crew decided to go to straight armed robbery. They’re just in there with guns holding people down and it just escalates. One of my best friends continued on this mission and eventually, somebody got murdered. He didn’t do it. But one of the kids he sent on the lick did it, which gave him the murder charge and he got a 35 to life bid.”
Ice T’s powerful new book Split Decision dives deep into the dramatically different outcomes for him and Spike his best friend and former partner in crime.
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“Once other options started to come, I went through ’em like gangbusters,” he says, “So when a chance came for this music called hip hop to rap about it, I was down. I wanted to rap like Melle Mel and Sugar Hill Gang but then people were like, say that sh*t you be saying, ’cause I used to say the rhymes to my crimes. Rappers start off as cheerleaders. You’re a cheerleader for a neighborhood or a clique. And my boys would love that sh*t. I’m like, nobody wants to hear that. But when I put it on wax, it created another genre. New York put hip hop on the map for sure but what started my trek into what they call gangsta rap was Schoolly D out of Philly because he’s repping PS K which is Parkside killers. And when he did that, I’m like, I’m going to get really explicit with the crime element that I was living in. And that turned out to be a genre. When I made the records, I didn’t think that many kids were living that life, but I was very mistaken. They were living it in Detroit. They were living it in New York. They were living it around the country.”
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Ice T became the first west coast rapper to go national defining gangsta rap for a nation. His rhymes are a hard look into a reality for millions but one thing distinguished his rhymes from other lyrics that just glorified gangsta life,
“Gangsta rap is a musical form that comes from that life. Now many people say it’s sent our communities on a bad direction. But does art imitate life or does life imitate art? I don’t think you could rap about this stuff if it wasn’t real. And when I hear even the kids now doing the drill records, I’m like, you might think it’s negative, but you need to know that mentality is out there. But to talk about the life of crime without telling you the B side of the game, you’re going to go to prison, you’re probably going to end up dead, then you’re faking it. So I’ve always tried to balance what’s so intoxicating about that life, but also the penalties that go along with it, Most of my friends are in prison or dead. And as I started to make this music, they were like, don’t send ni*gas to jail Ice. Don’t lie, tell the truth. That’s how I can look in the mirror.”
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A lot of Black folks don’t realize that Ice T is also a grammy award-winning heavy metal performer. His group Body Count produces platinum records and is on sold-out tours now.
“Body Count’s been out since 92. I had gone to Europe with PE (Public Enemy) and I seen the kids moshing and I was like, damn man, I need a rock band,” the iconic rapper explains. “And so I came back and I put together some of my guys from Crenshaw and we put the band together And I said, we’ll sing about the same shit I’m rapping about but we’ll just make it metal. And we put out the first album, the Cop Killer album, and it was out for two years. We went on a Lollapalooza tour, sold a million records, and then they hit us for a Cop Killer.”
The album became national news. Police organizations nationally tried to get it banned and political figures including then president George Bush criticized it. But that didn’t stop the group
“The last three albums Manslaughter, Blood Lust, and Carnivore, we’ve just continuously got better.” shares Ice. “So the new record I’m working on right now is called Merciless and it has to be better than Carnivore. A lot of black people don’t even know I’m still doing metal. Like Ice ain’t doing music but I’m selling records up the ass over here.”
From spitting lyrics on cop killer: “I’m a cop killer, it’s better you than me. Cop killer, f*ck police brutality! Cop killer, I know your family’s grievin’ (f*ck ’em!) Cop killer, but tonight we get even, haha!” to earning the distinction of being THE longest running male actor on TV by paying a cop on “Law and Order SVU” might seem you know, ironic.
“It’s funny but I never hated cops. I hate racists,” reveals Ice T. ” I hate bullies. But as a criminal, you don’t hate the cops. The cops are the opponent. If you are really a criminal punk on the street and you mad cuz the cops is jacking you, I get that. But if you and I are part of an organization, let’s say you’re selling drugs, the fact that drugs are illegal is what creates the margin for profit. So you don’t hate the cops, the cops are the opponent. You’re going to beat them, you’re going to outsmart them, but you don’t hate them. Cops are human beings. So you get the asshole cop, you get the cool cop … they’re humans. Now if you’re breaking the law then you don’t want any of ’em around you. But if you’re an honest citizen you want them to find your stolen car. ”
Does he prefer acting or music?
“Acting on television is different because that’s not mine, right?” Ice-T tells EURweb Spotlight’s Jazzy Jaz Summers. “I’m just kind of going in and saying the lines acting like a character. But when I do music that’s me. I’m in studio now working on one of my new rap artists Fedie DeMarco. He’s outta Watts, California. Real gangster.”
What can we expect?
“Gotta be hard,” Ice T shares. “There’s no time for nothing soft. And some people are just like that. It’s like I got one side of me that’s Stylistics, Dramatics, Delfonics all that old smooth playas. Then I got this other side of me that’s very hard and brutal the way I like to make music. You have to make music for yourself. If there’s a fan base for it, so be it. But going out trying to make music for other people, that’s a different skill set that I don’t own. I don’t really know how to do that. Every record I ever made, I made it for me.”
The soft side definitely comes out when he talks about his wifey of over 20 years Coco.
“I think getting married is like casting for a movie. You have to pick somebody who’s ready for all the scenes. There are going to be tough scenes. There’s going to be pain. There’s going to be fun. There’s going to be excitement. But are they ready for all of the scenes? New Edition says ‘sunny days, everybody loves them. But can you stand the rain?’ You have to match each other’s energy so when she walks in the room, she spins the room. But when I walk in the room, I spin it too We’re very happy. It’s like a plant though. You gotta always check it. You gotta make sure you happy. Make sure your partner’s happy Don’t just set it and forget it. I have total plans on being with Coco for the rest of the way out. I already told Coco, I’m 20 years older than her but you know us players, we stay thin in the waist, handsome in the face. With Coco, I gotta live to 80 cuz I’m not putting her back on the market till she’s 60, 65.”
He reveals that he didn’t expect to fall in love with a white woman.
“I was with Darlene (Ortiz) 15 years but we got together when we were young, I was just starting out. And sometimes you grow apart, all love stories aren’t novels, some are short stories. As you make more money, your options open up and I hate to say it but I only could talk to the girl across the street cuz I only had a bicycle. Once I got a little more money I could see girls all the way across the country. So I think you really deal with who’s next to you when you don’t have nothing because you have no options. And as our options grow, our decisions become different. But I don’t think it’s necessarily going after white women or going after Asian women. ”
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As for Black men who say they only date white women?
That’s stupid,” declares Ice T. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t date black women. Women are women. It’s basically who makes you feel good and can make you feel happy. Picking a race. That’s racist. At the end of the day when success comes, you just wanna be happy and a man rests his head where he finds peace., I’ve been with Black women. I’ve been with every flavor at Baskin Robbins. I never really thought I was going to necessarily fall in love with a white girl. That wasn’t my agenda. If a Martian had landed and made me feel the way Coco does, I’d be with some Martian p**sy right now.”
You can catch the full conversation in the video immediately above. And please don’t forget to subscribe to Jazmyn Summers’ youtube. Spotlight edited by Patrick House films.
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram and Facebook. She is no longer using Twitter due to the increased racism on the site which she believes is a result of Elon Musk’s policies.
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