Ice T
Ice T
Tracy Lauren Marrow better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American rapper and actor. He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays, the first hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker. The next year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Recordsand released another album, Power...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth16 February 1958
CityNewark, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.
As long as I'm around the cats in the hip hop scene, they'll throw me a track and I'll write a rap over it.
I'm a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.
I think that a rap aficionado, the hardcore rap fan, will always go away from pop, in the same way a hardcore jazz fan will never think Kenny G is really a jazz artist. You gotta kind of know there's always going to be that purist who's going to be like if it ain't beats and rhymes, if there ain't a DJ, then that ain't Hip Hop.
I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You've got to harden the metal.
Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.
I was a pretty bad person early in my life.
I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.
I think all music - not just rap - has fallen into this very diluted, delusional state, where everyone's singing about money and having cars, and having all this fun; when really, people are losing their homes.
Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.
With acting, you have to take it seriously because the other actors are putting in a lot of effort - and if you say, 'I'm just bullshitting here', it's like dissing 'em.
Rapping is a vocal delivery, so you can do it without being part of hip-hop and not knowing what hip-hop is about.
What's bad for the culture is wack rappers that get held in high regard like they're some great thing because it's the flavor of the month, but everybody knows they can't rap. I don't think it's hard, even for somebody who's not hip-hop, to know that that's not good. When you put them up against somebody that can really rhyme, you go, "Okay, I get it. This is what it should sound like."
I never know if the person I'm shaking hands with is coming to kill me. That's something you have to live with when you cross the lines.