“You don’t know, me fool / You disown me, cool,” Ice-T snarls within the 1988 hip-hop gang treatise “Colors.” The Afrika Islam-produced reduce, the title observe from the movie of the identical identify, boosted the Jersey-born, then-L.A.-dweller out of the underground, kick-starting a multifaceted profession that at present finds Ice sitting on a curved sofa within the vibrant open kitchen/household room of his Edgewater, N.J., house, daughter Chanel’s largely pink toys rigorously stacked close by.
Today, followers of his music are used to seeing the rapper-turned-actor in mainstream commercials that may’ve been too scared to forged him again within the day. O.G. Ice-T wouldn’t have been caught lifeless shilling for Cheerios (Ice teaches yoga); Tide (Ice “cold calls” chef Gordon Ramsay); or GEICO (Ice at a lemonade stand). But when the leap from gangster to gladhander wasn’t a part of a grasp plan, it’s not a far stretch.
“First, people don’t know who you are,” he explains of his early profession. “The neighborhood knows, but the people don’t. So you got to make them understand that you’re a serious person. Before we can have fun, you have to understand that I’m not all fun, right? So now people meet me. They go, ‘you’re nice.’ I’m like, ‘Well, you’re not my enemy. There’s another Ice. You don’t want to meet him.’ ”
At this time’s Ice-T — within the month previous to the U.S. election and earlier than the loss of life of one-time collaborator Quincy Jones — speaks eloquently on each these topics. In addition to on his Harley-Davidson-riding father-in-law, assembly Presidents Clinton (“That motherf— was charming as f—”) and Trump (pre-first presidency, “his character alone is piece of s— to me”), and the Structure, earlier than joyfully breaking into the refrain of the New Radicals track he hopes to cowl, “we only get what we give.”
It’s a time without work from the 66-year-old’s function as NYPD detective/sergeant Odafin Tutuola on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” a task he’s performed for twenty-four years. The irony of the “Cop Killer” — the track by his heavy metallic band Physique Rely that resulted in a parting of the way with Warner Bros. Data — taking part in a cop on TV is misplaced on nobody.
“It’s like they think it’s a snuff record something. Like they really believed I was telling people to go kill cops, which I wasn’t,” Ice-T says, not for the primary time for the reason that observe’s 1992 launch. “I was acting a character out. But f— it, I call that a badge of honor. Like the new ‘Merciless’ album cover, Japan says they don’t want it.” (The band brand is in blue and purple; giving each Crips and Bloods and Democratic and Republican connotations; Ice is in a blue surgical cap, blood-covered and holding a bone noticed in entrance of a blond man in a Ku Klux Klan gown tied to a chair.)
The 12-track document is Physique Rely’s eighth album, with Ice and Crenshaw highschool pal guitarist Ernie C (Cunnigan) and turntablist/keyboard participant Sean E Sean its authentic members. Bassist Vincent Worth, drummer Sick Will and rhythm guitarist Juan of the Lifeless spherical out the lineup with Ice’s son, Little Ice, his center baby, the band’s hype man and backing vocalist since 2016.
“Merciless,” like its predecessors, is filled with sound and fury, signifying a lot that Ice finds improper with the world, his evenhanded, clever opinions writ loudly, if graphically. The document was influenced by the COVID pandemic, however not in the best way one may think.
“The whole ‘Merciless’ album is based on my love of horror movies. The last four albums have been the rebirth of Body Count with Will Putney producing. We went from ‘Manslaughter’ to ‘Blood Lust’ to ‘Carnivore,’ ” Ice says. “So this is ‘Merciless,’ this is all the saga. When ‘Carnivore’ hit last year, we did well, we won the Grammy. Everything’s hot. The label goes, ‘OK, give me another album.’ ”
Ice’s voice rises. “We just s— an album out!’ I’m like, ‘How the f— imma do another?’ We never got to perform because the album dropped the day COVID hit.” Ice, who takes riffs and songs written by his band and rearranges them to his liking earlier than arising with lyrics, provides, “People don’t understand that when you make a record, you might put on 12,13, songs, but you made 27 that didn’t make it because they weren’t good enough. You don’t want to use them for the next album. You have to start from scratch.”
With a shuttered New York Metropolis throughout the Hudson River, Ice, spouse Coco (née Austin) and daughter Chanel spent COVID lockdown in Jersey. “I was watching horror movies, serial killers, all this s—. So before you know it, there’s a song called ‘The Purge.’ There’s a song called ‘Psychopath.’ I’m looking at this new election coming. I’m like, ‘these motherf—s are gang banging.’ All these different topics are coming to my head, and we make the next record.”
Whereas each metallic and hip-hop audiences are fast to name out posers, Ice-T comes by his rock ‘n’ roll bona fides because of his teenagers in L.A., the town he moved to after each his dad and mom handed away. “I had a cousin when I lived in L.A. who thought he was Jimi Hendrix and would keep the radio on KMET and KLOS. I heard everything from Pink Floyd to J. Geils Band to Boston to ELO to Mott the Hoople to Edgar Winter,” he recollects. “I started to get into groups like Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and of course, Sabbath. I started to like the darker stuff, right?”
Whereas there stays valuable few Black rock and metallic bands, Ice-T says the preliminary purpose with Physique Rely was “to find an audience to play for so Ernie could play his guitar.” Ernie C and late drummer Beatmaster V started professional careers on Ice-T’s 1987 debut studio album for Sire, “Rhyme Pays.” “We used the Sabbath hook from ‘War Pigs,’ but it was live drums, Beatmaster V. Then I did “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” (1989). Ernie performed on that.” On the time, hip-hop was very sample-based. However a inventive spark was lighted when Ice-T went on tour with Public Enemy. He noticed “kids moshing off of ‘Bring the Noise’ and ‘[Welcome to the] Terrordome.’
“I’m like, ‘We’re gonna take the punk sensibility of Suicidal [Tendencies],’ who already had a gangbanger look,” says Ice-T, excited on the reminiscence. “I said, ‘We’re gonna take the speed of Slayer and the impending doom of Black Sabbath, mash that together, and I’m gonna sing about the same s— that I sing about in rap. But I’m not gonna rap it. Imma bark it. I call it ‘barking’ because I was listening to New York hardcore, like Madball and groups like that. They’re not singing. I can’t sing like Journey, but yeah, this vocal delivery isn’t out of my range.’ So I said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
Greater than 30 years later, Physique Rely has not run out of heavy riffing concepts or equally weighty lyrical matters. The brand new track “Do or Die” isn’t from his horror film binge; it’s the frontman’s view on weapons. Ice-T isn’t essentially pro-gun, reasonably, the previous Military infantryman clarifies: “I walk into a room, and nobody’s got a gun, OK. But if I walk in the room and somebody’s got a gun, I want a gun. I don’t want to be the guy with the butter knife.”
Because of his frequent sense l way of living, individuals inform Ice-T he must be in politics. The one-time gangster’s retort? “I got out of crime. I’m on a soapbox. I can say whatever the f— I want. I’ve pretty much said everything I wanted to say. I think in my history, you can look at Ice-T and say, ‘Ice-T has done some crazy s—.’ But I doubt if you find something I done stupid.”
The daddy of three and husband of twenty-two years’ time denies having any secrets and techniques. “I never been to no Diddy parties; not my scene. Honestly, I come from so much drama and chaos that when I finally got a chance to get out of it… I don’t jaywalk in New York. I don’t break the law. I don’t do that,” he provides, “because I used to do it every day. I was deep in, and I could have caught a life sentence. I’ve been so blessed and so lucky. if I did anything illegal, if I lied to somebody, if I did something crazy, I think I’d die. I think I would suffer Instant Karma.”
Elder statesman Ice-T can also be OK that he’s not talking to the youth. “You have to embrace your evolution and understand that the torch has to be passed. Like Chuck D told me, ‘At this point, if you’re not having fun, you did all this for nothing.’ I think what we did,” he concludes, “was the heavy lifting. We did enough to change the world. To me, Barack Obama was a hip-hop president. He was the president of the kids who voted for him, that grew up with us. Those white kids didn’t exist before hip-hop, you know? We created surge of young white youth who weren’t racist.”
And whereas he’s glad to “talk s—” to his longtime followers by way of “Merciless,” he says, “we did our part. It’s now time for young kids to do their part. We need a new young PE. A new young Ice-T. Because now, I’m sorry, but I’m the old guy.” He’s glad to nonetheless maintain — and step over — the road, whereas understanding he’s not influencing younger individuals “the way a 21-year-old or youngster would if he was saying it. It hits them harder because it’s their peers.”
That’s to not say a Physique Rely present is something wanting raucous or provocative, Ice-T bringing the noise and depth together with his equally pumped highschool OGs within the band. “When I play a song, the audience goes back to the day they first heard that song. And then for me to perform it correctly, I have to go back to that moment when I wrote ‘Colors,’ ” he says. “So now I’m a 16-year-old dude on a stage, gangbanging, because to perform it correctly, I have to get into that place. So music is the fountain of youth.”
