Having been turned down by W.E.A. on initial request for an interview with the Ice-man, tape recorder in hand we waited outside the stage door at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, where I knew Ice would eventually come out to take a look at the crowd. After five minutes of waiting he came out
" Any chance of an interview?"
"Gotta tape?"
"Yup"
"Let's do it now!", says he heading into the depths of the Barrowlands, the old methods are crude, but they work.
Ice-T's rap's deal with subjects ranging from gang warfare and drugs in South Central L.A. to domestic violence and censorship. We asked, now that he has moved out of South Central to Hollywood Hills, did he still feel involved with the problems there.
Well it's like, I can never really lose that, you know what I'm saying, I'm still deeply involved in the situations, although I'm out of the hood, all my homeboys are still there so every day I call, somebody else is dead, lot of my friends are still involved with crime and drugs. If I gotta shout out to a criminal defense lawyer you know I'm still helping my homies and shit, you know, the question always arises, how can you write about it if you ain't there, now, that's like telling somebody whose been to vietnam that you can't tell me about firefights because now you're not in the war. You know, I wake up in the best hotel rooms and don't know where I'm at still today, so it's no real problem, I don't feel guilty at all getting out, because that's what I was trying to do when I was down there doing all that crime, I was spending my life trying to get to this house, now I got it. . .
It's funny people come to my house to interview me and it's like you got ducks and bird feeders all this shit, this don't look like a gangsters house. I say, you stupid motherfucker, what the fuck do you think I wanted, if you went to any mafia boss or hitman's house you would see fuckin' bird feeders and ducks, I mean, how did the Godfather die, in the back playing with his grandson in the rose bushes, you know, most true criminals would surround themselves with everything opposite their lifestyle, if I was a millionaire's son, I would love living in a room like this, this would seem cool to me, but wearing torn jeans ain't my idea of cool, I used to have to wear them, I think Edward G. Robinson was one of the best dressed criminals, the true success story of crime is being able to get into that suit, those are the guys to watch for. People contradict themselves, most people don't understand the true trail that crime takes you. Crime isn't an attempt to go dark, it's an attempt to become light, so being a criminal, you want a ferrari, you want the best clothes so that's why it really bothers me when people go, why are you away from it. Even when I was active in crime I never lived in the ghetto, I always would steal enough to stay in a nice hotel, you know, or steal somebodies else's credit card to live, so I never was intrigued with that, if I had liked it, I always wanted to escape the killing fields, with a passion. So I finally did, and now my objective is to get my homeboys out, that's my new objective.
How are you trying to do that?
I found out that just giving them money doesn't help because they have got to get their minds set to do what they have to do, I bought all my friends cars, they say they wanna get an apartment, I'll put up the first and last, you know, but I won't pay the rent, I help my people out, and my boys know, Ice'll look after you, but you gotta look out for yourself. Like right now, on this tour, I can sell this show out by myself, but what I do is I bring six groups, I'm trying to give them exposure and shit. Then I got my old crime buddies working as road managers and shit like that. Just trying to keep them alive.
(You see, in South Central) you got a gang situation, you got a drug situation, all the Jamaican posses and everybody else killing each other, it's like rats trying to get out of a barrel, they're all drowning and pushing everybody else down, it's real sad, but I made it out of these, and my objective is to say, yo! I was worse or just as bad as any of y'all fuckers so listen, this can be done. Ain't really much else I can do.
On the Oprah Winfrey Show about Censorship you were with Darlene, who appeared on the rather controversial cover of Power, is she your wife?
No, the news broadcast of the nineties is I'm not married but Darlene is my girlfriend. What happened was when we did the Power album cover there was so much shit about the cover " Oh my god, this girl, you've abused this woman and taken advantage of the girl" , She's my girlfriend, and it turned from girlfriend to wife but I used to call any girl I walked across the street with my wife, I don't really believe in the laws which go along with legal marriage. So she's been with me a long time, the problem was people were coming up to me and saying `well when did you get married? Can we see wedding pictures." Plus it was like, it helped a lot of young ladies, a lot of girls, "oh, you're not married, so there is a ray of hope". But like Darlene has been down with me for like, Six years and you know she stayed, right now she's modeling, she's cool, we got a cool relationship, based on the way we live. If I meet a girl out here, she just don't wanna meet her, do what I gotta do, don't tell her about it, it's cool. That's why we've been together so long. That's how most women are, they won't say it, but they can't really tell whether you're doing something, they just don't want to hear about it. Some women are more investigative than others, but when you're away from you're girl for six months at a time. . .
On O.G. there are no sex tunes, why?
When we made the O.G. album, we were making the records real fast, you know, like, this is good, this is good. So what happened was, I has finished the album and got like, twenty five - twenty six tracks done and we hadn't done a sex rhyme, why? It just hadn't come to mind.
Is this a defensive move on your part?
Not so much, because I really don't give a fuck about em, I don't care, I'm not running from anything, I just didn't do a sex rhyme. The next album has two sex rhymes, One called Peace to the Whores, which shouts out to all the prostitutes, nude dancers and hookers in the world giving them the thumbs up, telling them I respect them more than a girl that sits on your bed expecting me to give her some money, who won't go out and get a job, who won't go to school, who won't work for herself. I got more respect for a hooker, at least she works. So Peace to the Whores, Ice-T style.
Then I got another about a girl who I fell in love with who was a gangster, she was the kind of girl I would call for backup if I had a problem. She was tougher than the guys, she had crazy sex with me. told me I was it, and I broke down after it because I loved her, it's called Hard Working Tammy from Miami who packed a Jammi. She was cool so, as far as the sexist shit, the war isn't between men and feminists, it's between two classes of women, it's the women who like to wear bikini's and the women who don't like to wear bikini's, that's the fight. If you polled a hundred men about that album cover with Darlene on it " would you rather see her in a bathing suit or coverall's" 50 men would say the bathing suit, 49 would lie, and say the coveralls worried about the feminists, and one guy who didn't like it would rather see me in a bathing suit. So men like sexy women, there is no question about that. Now half the women would look at Darlene and say "Damn, she look good", the other half would have a problem with it, all the girls who come to my show love `Buttnaked and fuck', that's why they come, when I stop with the sex records, I got the letters from the girls, not the guys " when are you going to talk nasty, women like to be talked nasty", it's like verbal phone sex, women like to hear you talk about shit, I don't know why and then someone says `oh that's so terrible'. Fuck them! I never said on no record that I raped a girl, so I ain't worried about that, even though on this new record `Institutionalized', a guy that I rap with, he says some thing about raping somebodies Mom and putting her in a trunk, but he's crazy, he's institution-alised. He don't give a fuck, he's mad, he's telling this reporter how he feels, he says "I ain't seen pussy in about 36 months, and you're ass is looking good to me, bend over I might have pussy on a stick" He's talking about fucking this dude in the ass, this is a guy from prison. So this Dude's crazy, but that's the name of the new album "Institutionalized"
Hmmm, sounds a bit dodgy. Have you ever rejected a subject matter as being too extreme. Does Ice-T ever find self-censorship necessary?
No, the only thing I wouldn't rap about is something that I don't know, there are a lot of things that I wouldn't rap about because I don't agree with, I would never rap about molesting children or shit like that, I don't that shit is funny, but I might rap about molesting women, because I might think that's funny. It's all up to me but I'm the judge, a lot of things I said in the past I would change, I used to make jokes about aids which were uncool, but everybody made aids jokes when aids first came out and then you found out it wasn't no joke. So I don't talk like that no more, it's still gotta register in my mind to be wrong, so if you have a problem with something I say, you have to come to me and say `Yo Ice I don't like this, and I'll sit up and in the next hour I might change it. If I feel, but I won't let other people wave flags in my face and I say Ok Ok Ok Ok, Self - Censorship . . at first I wouldn't even let them bleep my records because radio D.J.'s wanted them, and I was like No! I was real hard, but then a lot of the D.J.'s were like `Ice, we love you man, but it's the F.C.C. it's not us, we want to play you're shit, give us the edited version we want to bump it. So I thought about it, who the fuck am I being tough with, these guys are serious, so I do edited versions of singles, not of the L.P., singles. So when you buy the book, you get the real book, if you pick up the singles they are edited for radio. Not so much in the attempt to make money, but in the attempt to be cool with the D.J's who ask me to do it.
Is censorship still as much of an issue to you now as was wen you recorded The Iceberg?
My thing now is, I am going to tell it to you once, then I'll move on. There are so many things I've made comments on, if I continually repeat myself I'll never get anywhere, I tell you about police, then I move on, you see Rodney King a couple of years later and say damn, Ice told us. I told you about Censorship about a year before the 2-Live Crew got hit with it, so I don't talk about censorship on the O.G. album because it is like water under the bridge,move onward. Now I say, Escape from the Killing fields, so next year you hear the problem of blacks or poor people moving into upper class neighbourhoods and the upperclass fighting them, and say that Ice told us that that's the move. Nobody lives in the ghetto by choice, you don't like there because you're black or jamaican, you live there cos you're poor, and your mother lived there because she was poor, so get the fuck out of that neighbourhood, leave it a barren wasteland, because there are certain areas that the system determines are wastelands and they don't add they don't care. So that's the knowledge I drop on the O.G. album. Don't let anybody tell you ` you don't wanna live in the ghetto no more, oh you selling out'. Fuck you, I'm trying to move next door to the Queen mother-fucker, and I'm gonna play my music loud.
But although there are no over comments on OG about censorship, the tracks Straight up Nigga and Bitches 2 do seem to be attempts to defend the use of some of the imagery. Do you ever feel you have to justify yourself against conservative criticism?
Not against them but just against people who don't understand totally what I'm talking about. And this last album is the last album which I will justify myself. The Institutionalized album is very . . . I ain't telling you no more, if I say the word 'bitch', by now you should know what I mean. I'm not telling you wat 'nigger' means. I'm not explaining no more. We've got four albums, you know where I'm coming from so you either agree, or you don't. All the explanation has been done, so you'll be like "Oh sit, he's gone crazy!' Te whole theory of the Institutionalised album is when they leave you on the streets you're like 'I can't adapt, where's my three meals a day. I can't live out here'. Then you want to go back to jail. That's when you become institutionalised.
It also means the ghetto institutionalises you, where you have been living there for so long. I take you out to a nice restuarant, and you're like 'they're looking at me funny I want to go back to my home, Idon't want to stay in this nice hotel'. And that's the game. The system wants to keep everybody warped where we don't wanna go and kick it with them. Fuck them, you know, I'm going anywhere I want. but this particular character I play on this album has totally gone crazy, he's fucked up. It's gonna be a real? Angry album, like a cross between Ice-T and the Ghetto Boys. More aggressive.
Speaking of more aggressive stuff, tell us about Body Count.
The guys that play on Body Count are the guys who play the live instruments on my albums, like in Girl Tried to Kill Me there was a live guitar, that was Ernie C, a few basslines, once in a while you hear a live drum. So these are my boys, so they're always fighting with me about putting more rock on the album and I'm like "Well come on, this is rap." I wanna do it, when we're making our records, I'm in there like "Angel of Death" (he headbangs). We're like using that to get our energy up so I was like 'fuck it, let's make a metal group, and we're gonna call is Body Count, and I'm gonna be the lead singer and we're just going to be the alter-ego of Ice-T. Ice-T is the rapper who's there and understands. Body Count don't understand. They're just there. And they don't give a fuck. They're like te last motherfuckers you're gonna meet. The system has fucked Body Count and Body Count just says fuck everybody.
Body Count is an all-out metal group. We've got the stage props and everything and we're coming in for the kill. That's what the title Body Count means. In Los Angeles on a Sunday night the lady comes on the news and says "13 people killed in gang warfare this weekend, now sports." To me being a black man in Los Angeles make me just a statistic, another one in the body count.
It also means ' how many groups do we have to annihilate before we get full respect? How many stupid rock groups do we have to just tear into? When you come to our concert we say come to our concerts and become a statistic, meaning come in there thinking we ain't gonna rock and walk out saying 'damn'. And also how many serious injuries for high speed elbows.
What Body Count is supposed to sound like is a cross between Slayer and Motorhead. Motorhead is a groove group, and Slayer is aggressive. What I try to call it is consumable metal. Once you hear it, the next time I play KKK Bitch you know it, the next time Iplay Cop Killer you could sing the chorus, that's what I'm trying to do. But not at all commercial because we got the worst record - one called Barbecued Pork, that's about firebombing police cars. Mammas Gotta Die Tonight is about setting your mommas bed on fire because she's a racist. Evil Dick is about my evil dick, but evil Dick is a person, he likes warm moist places. . .
Body Count's album will be out in hopefully February - March. They're recording right now as we speak in LA laying the tracks. I've gotta come in and lay the vocals and do te mix and stuff. But they've got Mustaine in there from Megadeth, Kirk from Metallica, Gary from Exodus, Duffy from G'N'R, I'm rapping on Duffy's new album. So we got all the support. It's going to be the hardest metal album ever made. The name of the album is Cop Killer and it's the worst shit.
Recently Ice-T appeared in a surprise hit film `New Jack City', a far cry from the streets of South Central, we asked him how this all came about and why?
I was in a club, and Mario Van Peebles approached me asking me if I wanted to be in a movie, at the time, I had some females with me, some girls and I thought Mario was just trying to hit on the girls, so I was like `yeah, right, I'll be in a movie, right, this is charlotte and yvonne' So the next day he called me up and he was serious, so I went to Warner Brothers, they told that they wanted me to be in a movie, they told me that I had to wear dreadlocks, I said what, they told me I had to play a cop, I'm like Fuck That" So I walked out of the place, they kept calling me, so I talked to my friends, "yo man, they want me to be in a movie", "Word", "They want me to be a cop", "Word". And nobody ever said no, they were impressed. I said, "don't you guys have a problem with me playing a cop", they said "no man, you acting man, fuck that, didn't you like Dirty Harry, didn't you like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills cop, don't you like Arnold S., they cops, you better go play that cop." I was like, "Damn, will my fans take it wrong", I was really worried because I knew that I was taking ten years of my life, filled with a lot of integrity, and I was really worried that someone was going to say that I sold out, but I did the movie, because I became more concerned that people were saying that Ice was moving up, let's not believe that because we come from the Ghetto, that all we can become is rappers, be an actor, be a director, be anything, so that's what I'm trying to show. So I did the movie, jumped without a net, fan's caught me and said `you're cool still', I ain't looking for no more cop roles.
Working on the film was very scary, I was the only one in there that really had anything to lose, because I was the only one with another career, that was successful, all these other actors, fuck it, if they fall off, they're actors. I was petrified. After that I just finished another movie called Riccochet, with Denzyl Washington, I get to play a bad guy ( thumbs up ), and it comes out October 4th, I'm not as major a role, but it's an important role. Joel Silver is like a hero to me as far as taking black actors and putting them into big budget films, he did Eddie Murphy, he did Damian ??, the kid from Living Colour, put me and Denzyl in a movie and right now he want to do another , he's cool, and he's action and I like action movies, he did Predator. He's in the house, and he's a good man too.
What about the current run of black films?
It's really because of Spike Lee and Robert Townsend because they started making movies with their own money and they showed that they could make a movie for 100,000 and make six million. The ball started rolling, it's not a revolution of black films, just a new commodity that had been brought to hollywood and theirs money to be made. It's not like Hollywood all of a sudden became black conscious, they became conscious that people would pay to see a black film. Now every other situation comedy in America is black, so they know that white people will laugh at us, but like, damn, will they cry with them? Will the get serious? And it's selling. And now that New Jack City does like 60 million dollars, in the U.S., it is the number 3 video other there, there's gonna be a lot more, as soon as there is no more big money to be made there will be no more black films, it's no revolution. For it to be a revolution it would have to be a whole bunch of black people with their own money, running in their all of a sudden and making movies, but at the moment we are all still getting money from the white film companies. Hopefully it will be just be film, not black or white film, because I remember seeing Sylvester Stallone, Arnie and Deniro and all these guys all my life, and I don't go saying that it is a white film, I just go see it.
The O.G. video was directed entirely by Ice-T, I asked why this was and did he have any further aspirations in that field.
I directed every one of my videos except for `Colors', and the only reason I didn't do `Colors' was because I didn't have the time, but I wrote the concept. The reason I do my own videos, is because what I talk about is so gray to everybody else, `What is a New Jack Hustler', `We're gonna have these girls dancing..'. I am talking about something. So I just started directing it and now I know about my lenses, and my angles and my shots. I'll tell you what the O.G. video was supposed to be, the O.G. video was supposed to be shot before the album, that was the theory, because I know I can move 50,000 videos, which is a gold video, had they released my O.G. video a month before my album, I could have moved 2 or 3 hundred thousand videos, being the first video l.p., but I've been the first in so much shit and their like `no,no,no, no,no', then when the album came out it was like `let's do it know', so they give me two weeks before Lollapalooza to shoot that whole fucking thing and I shot all those videos `blam blam blam, jump out of the car, blam blam go to San Quentin.' The Tower was shot in San Quentin so some of the videos are better than others, but to me, it's supposed to be more of a performance of the album and the way I cut it, I wanted you to be able to like put it in, the videotape, and walk around your house and play just like you've got the C.D. on, now you might gaze up and there's a picture, but you don't have to sit and watch it, you watch it once, then you can either play it . . like sometimes in my house I'll play the video tape, and I've got monitors in my house, and it'll be going and you can listen to the music, in the clubs it works too. That's what it's for.
As far as me actually directing a film, that would be great, but the problem is, here's the problem film number 1 is much more money, you got more people breathing down your back, with video I have full creative control, I just directed Hijack's video, Donald D, Lord Finesse so I am working with outside groups, I don't know, to me directing is like, it's your story, and I'm like, it would have to be the right script, if I did reality, it would be too real for public consumption. So therefore to shoot reality I would have to do my own underground film which I'm planning on doing, but I could direct a comedy or a fantasy film no problem, because I'm not dealing with reality, but when you tell me to deal with something like Boyz in the Hood or something like that, I'm gonna show you some shit which will scare the shit out of you, because that is coming from here, but, I am planning on buying 16mm equipment when I get home and just shoot some little short Ice-T Joint's, I've got some ideas. Much better than the O.G. video, to me that was just a way or saying watch me know out twenty six videos for the price of one, they gave me the price of one video to do all those videos. The full budget videos was like New Jack Hustler, O.G., Lifestyle of the Rich and Infamous, those were full budget, you can tell. I had the same money to do one of them to do all the rest. No lights, nothing.
Check out Ice-T's comments about Lollapalooza in out special feature in the next issue.