Ice

by Ice-T

  In retrospect, I understand: Dude is a child. As a child you don’t really have guidance. Maybe he doesn’t know about the ground-breaking artists who laid the foundation for him. Maybe he doesn’t know enough to pay homage to those men. Or maybe he isn’t capable of making better music. I mean, it’s not his intent to destroy hip-hop.

  Soulja Boy doesn’t know me from a can of paint. Good luck with his career. Good luck to everything he’s trying to do.

  But as a G, being emotionally invested in something I had a hand in creating, I want the art form to stay lyrical, relevant, and talent-based. I admire the skills of the DJ, the skills of the breakdancer, the skills of the graffiti artist, the skills of the MC. When I hear artists saying, “Yo, I just want to get the paper,” that pisses me off. When you say you don’t really give a shit, and you just want to get on the radio, then you’re pop to me. And pop has always been my enemy.

  Frankly, I don’t feel the fire anymore from the youth. I miss my era when motherfuckers were fighting for shit, spitting fire in their lyrics. When I went in on little homey, did I come off like a grumpy middle-aged dude? Probably. But so what? I’ll own that shit. I’m Ice-T—one of them old thug motherfuckers that’ll take your head off.

  Don’t get me wrong. I listen to all the new music. And there are intelligent cats doing it today. I like Young Jeezy and Lupe Fiasco and T.I. Lil’ Wayne—when he wants to, when he ain’t bullshittin’—can rap his ass off. And you’ve got cats like Jay-Z that are superskilled. Jay-Z is a jewel. One of the most dope rappers ever. I know Jay; I’ve seen him get busy in the booth, he doesn’t even write shit down. Jay is just rap-gifted.

  Eminem proved he’s a master lyricist and promoter—and his last record went gold in two days. To me, that proves there’s hope in the world. Even though Em did a few pop records to get on the radio and cement that fan base—he gets a pass for that. I always give Em mad love; right when he was coming out, he gave an interview talking about influences, and he said, “The very first rap record I ever heard was ‘Reckless’ by Ice-T.” That’s the electro-beat battling track I did with Dave Storrs and Chris “The Glove” Taylor, and it shows Eminem’s hip-hop knowledge runs deep.

  Drake is the man-of-the-moment. I won’t front; the kid has talent. But Drake right now is ruling in a land where there’s not that many great people. It’s like Ali. We wouldn’t recognize Ali’s greatness if we hadn’t seen him fight wars with other great heavyweights like Frazier, Foreman, Norton, Chuvalo. In every arena, in every era, you’re defined by your comp edition. I hear people already trying to compare Drake to Jay-Z. My answer is: Okay, let’s talk in ten years. After ten albums. But not on dude’s first record. That just sounds stupid. There’s a formula to reach a certain exalted status and be considered a G in our game: performance and consistency over time. Everybody’s riding Drake. But in my book, right now Ludacris is the most dangerous spitter in the game.

  I WAS BLESSED to come up during the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. I’m not claiming I’m one of the artists that’s at the top of the list, but I was there. I ask people all the time, “Name the last important hip-hop album. Name the last great rapper.” If they have any in-depth knowledge of hip-hop, they invariably reach back to artists from that golden era.

  When I was in the studio in ’85, ’86, ’87, I knew that Kane, KRS-One, Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim were all in the studio at the same exact time, so I felt I was in a pressure cooker. The level of the game was at an all-time high. I couldn’t put out lame bullshit.

  The dudes I first met in New York: Grandmaster Caz, Grandmaster Flash—think on that: their very names got “master” in them. When you get to that point where you’ve mastered it, then you can teach it. These cats are not a joke. These cats are not a game.

  In my day, one of the reasons that the talent pool in hip-hop was so deep was because there was a defined rite of passage. You used to have to work your way up to the mic. Now kids are just getting the mic because they get a record deal, and then they do their very first stage show.

  No matter how much I talk about the Golden Age, people don’t understand it. Because a lot of people who are coming up just weren’t there. They don’t understand Big Daddy Kane. They don’t understand Rakim. They don’t even know who KRS-One is or the impact that Public Enemy had on the world.

  I kept saying it over and over in interviews in magazines and on TV. I kept talking about it in lectures. I got sick of repeating it. And after I got into it with Soulja Boy, I realized I couldn’t convince these young cats with my words alone.

  Show and prove. It’s one of the things we say in the street. Don’t tell me you’re my friend. Show it. Prove it.

  After the Soulja Boy situation, I was sitting home and thinking about the best way I could express my love for hip-hop, the best way I could show and prove. Then it hit me: I should make a documentary. Actually, I got motivated after I had a cameo in Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair. That was such a fun movie, it was shot so easily—he got me in one quick session. Truth be told, I didn’t even know I was in the movie, until I heard about it coming out and me and Coco went to the New York premiere. I loved the way Chris shot that joint. Everyone carries digital cameras around now, I said. I can shoot a movie myself, guerilla style. I’ll just interview all the rappers that I feel mean something. I went though my Rolodex and found out I knew every-fucking-body. I called them up and said, “Yo, I got twelve questions I wanna ask you.”

  The documentary follows my life, coming from L.A., wanting to be a rapper, meeting the cats in New York, then watching hip-hop go back to L.A. I talk to Ice Cube and groups from out West.

  The movie is not about the money, the girls, the cars—none of that. I feel it’s the definitive movie about the art form. It takes the best hip-hop artists of all time and asks them: How are you motivated and inspired? What are the techniques and the craft that go into making a great rhyme? How do we as rappers judge other rappers? Not the fans—the fans will jump on whoever’s got the hottest record on the radio. Who do we—hip-hop artists—consider great?

  The film breaks down the distinction between biting and being inspired by someone. Nobody’s mad at inspiration. People are mad at biting—taking someone’s shit and not giving credit. When I was coming up, for me not to give credit to King Sun or Schoolly D would be biting; but I always give those cats props for the rhymes that inspired me to write “6 in the Mornin’ ” and “Colors.”

  A lot of people bit off me over the years. I got a lyric that goes, “Motherfuckers are stealing shit I haven’t even made up yet.”

  If there’s any one thing I take pride in—as far as helping this hip-hop game to grow into the empire it is today—it’s the number of firsts. I was the first L.A. rapper respected in New York. First rapper to drop that street language—bitch, ho, nigga. First to bring back the black heavy metal band in our generation. First rapper to write a book when I dropped my collection of essays, The Ice Opinion, in ’92. First rapper to start acting in films. First rapper to land a role on a network television series.

  But I always liked to switch up my game, get out of my comfort zone. Again, like Chuck D said, I’m the guy to jeopardize my entire career just to stay awake.

  And I’m still looking to make some more firsts. I hope The Art of Rap will be seen as the definitive film about lyricism. It’s going to show the world the passion we have for the music. And hopefully, if I’m lucky, the film will help reformat the game.

  Frankly, I think my generation of hip-hop is like fine art. But if you don’t understand fine art, you can’t go see Picasso and Van Gogh—you won’t get it. You need to know their stories. Once you understand Van Gogh cutting his ear off—his suffering, his loneliness, his heightened sense of reality—then you look at his paintings and feel them. You need to understand the Renaissance, Impressionism, Expressionism, all these schools of art, before you dive headfirst into the museum.

  I don’t know if it’s possible to reformat the hip-hop gam
e. I don’t know if it’s possible to educate a young generation about the pantheon of greats. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about The Art of Rap. If the documentary just stands up as a classic film about old-school rappers, so be it. I can live with that.

  I’LL ALWAYS BE the kind of dude who speaks his mind. Fuck stepping on toes. I call it like I see it. But don’t mistake that outspokenness for someone who likes initiating beefs. I’ve seen enough real violence in my life to know that it’s nothing to be flippant about. In fact, if there’s one thing the name Ice-T has stood for, both in the hip-hop game and in the street, it’s been as a peacemaker.

  Check this—in my era of hip-hop, dudes earned their stripes by battling. That was part of the art of rap: coming off the dome with some creative, cutting, spontaneous dis. Those legendary live battles between LL and Kool Moe Dee. And on wax between MC Shan and KRS-One. Niggas used to talk mad shit in lyrics; but niggas wasn’t shooting each other over it. In fact, go back to a lot of those original rap battles—half the time the two “warring” crews would do stage shows together to promote their battle records.

  But then the hip-hop game started to get more mixed up with the gangster world, back in the mid-to-late 1990s. Brothers who were not O.G.s—maybe they were small-time street cats making exaggerated claims in their records—started to bring the heavy-hitters and murderers from their old neighborhoods into their entourages. And these gangsters were beginning to see hip-hop as a legit hustle that they could muscle into—a lot safer than trying to beat the Feds at the drug game.

  When that so-called East Coast vs. West Coast war broke out, the situation was troubling for me on a lot of levels. Because I was the first artist to rep the West who’d come out and built with the best of the New York cats. Because I’d been down with the Zulu Nation and created my own Rhyme Syndicate, telling the hip-hop community: Let’s all do this. Let’s all get paid. The pie is big enough—all of us can eat.

  Even though it’s common to see it still written up as such, there never was an East Coast vs. West Coast war. I never had a beef with the East Coast. It was just a hyped-up beef between two companies, Bad Boy and Death Row, between Puffy and Suge. But Suge never represented all of us on the West, and Puffy never represented all of the East.

  Long before the shit started getting violent, when it was still basically a war of words on wax and in the hip-hop magazines, I was asked about it in an interview.

  “I wish they would just squash it,” I said. “Because they got power. And if they connect, it’s on; we’ll have a real black hip-hop power base. If they connected, maybe they could be the basis of a new Motown-like label for hip-hop. How could a kid from Compton dislike a kid from Brooklyn? They don’t even know each other!”

  But the situation was already too heated. And I was probably too idealistic in thinking that Suge and Puffy could shake hands, link their two ventures and start building an even bigger empire together.

  ’PAC AND I WERE CLOSE FRIENDS. I’ve known ’Pac since he was carrying record crates, down with Digital Underground. I got to work with ’Pac on “Last Words,” which was a track with ’Pac, Cube, and me on the 2Pacalypse Now album.

  Roseanne Barr used to have a sketch-comedy show on FOX called Saturday Night Special. ’Pac and I guest-hosted the show one night. We didn’t have any idea what we were going to do, if we were going to rap or act or whatever.

  For one of the skits we sang “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” It was a crazy-ass idea, and neither one of us would have done it alone. But because both of us were there, and because we had a lot of mutual respect, we said, “Okay, let’s go for the joke.” I wasn’t worried about looking stupid, ’cause ’Pac was in it. He wasn’t worried about looking stupid cause Ice was in it.

  ’Pac was cracking up the whole time, but I would not smile. I was singing my ass off, wearing a fedora and shades. I was trying to be the consummate professional and do it the way they wrote it.

  That was a great moment, and it’s the way I like to remember ’Pac. That was a side of him a lot of people didn’t get to see. I knew it. Tupac was a great guy, hilarious—a fun cat. I know the flip side of almost all these hard-as-hell rappers. There’s a flip side to a lot of folks. You can’t judge any of us entertainers by our stage personas. People meet me today and they are scared as shit. They don’t know I tell jokes and laugh just like any other normal cat.

  ’Pac came to me when he was just starting to beef with Biggie. He was on some wild shit. Riled up beyond words. He played me his record “Hit ’Em Up” in my studio. I think I was one of the first people to hear it. Right off the bat, he was coming at Big so hard: “That’s why I fucked your bitch, you fat muthafucka …”

  When a dude comes and plays you a record he hasn’t even released, you’re supposed to be happy, congratulating him, giving him a pound. But I was, like, “Uhhh … this is gonna cause a problem … Homey, this is gonna spiral into something bigger, you know?”

  I was older and I told him, straight up: Why don’t you go knock on Biggie’s door and handle it? Just go figure this shit out man-to-man. Why you writing records?

  He didn’t want to hear it. He was hotheaded at the time. His group, the Outlawz, was with him in the room, and they were all buck wild and co-signing the drama. Tupac actually got kind of angry that I wouldn’t ride with him. You know, I was a West Coast O.G., so I was supposed to ride with him on that beef.

  He was pissed, but he respected the big homey. He felt like I should have been more amped up about shit.

  But I was looking at the big picture, and it turned out to be fatal.

  I do that all the time. Whenever there’s conflict, I try to think through the consequences three or four steps ahead, like in chess. Honestly, I didn’t expect the final result to be that tragic—two of our best young talents murdered while in their prime. But once I heard that track “Hit ’Em Up,” I knew it wasn’t going to end well.

  THE MOOD IN THE STREET was so ugly, so hopeless, and dudes were scared there would be retaliation and escalation. I saw my role as stepping into the breach as a G, and acting as a mediator.

  When Biggie was shot in L.A., I immediately called into Hot 97 in New York, offering my condolences to Biggie’s family. I reminded the listeners that I’d always been one of the artists who worked with cats from both coasts, from New York and Cali. And I wasn’t about to let the media distort shit, to blow up this personal rivalry, essentially a beef between two record labels, into some kind of East Coast vs. West Coast war. I got on the radio and said, “Yo, let’s not start this rumor that East and West Coast got beef. I love Biggie and I know a gang of people in L.A. that love Biggie.”

  IT STILL HURTS ME that Big was murdered in L.A. You can’t come from Los Angeles and not have the daily violence, the unsolved drive-by shootings, and the intergenerational gang situation weigh heavily on you. The thing of it is, fuck the rap music, as a person you’re going to have certain things that matter to you. No bullshit: I can’t count the number of my friends who got killed out in the street. I once dropped a rhyme that said:

  I don’t hate white people

  That’s a well-known fact

  ’Cause all of my homeys

  Got killed by blacks

  My career is so intrinsically tied to gangbanging; the songs I’ve made, the life I’ve depicted. As artists and celebrities, people are always urging us to “give back.” What’s the best way for me to give back? That was a question I ruminated over in my mind for a long time.

  IN THE WAKE of the Rodney King verdicts, after the riots that tore L.A. apart in 1992, an unprecedented truce was called between long-warring gangs. Understand: I had nothing to do with setting the gang truce off. The gang truce jumped off between Imperial Courts and the Bounty Hunters, two projects right next door to each other in Watts. They’ve been lifetime enemies, and in the aftermath of the riots, they decided to forge a truce.

  It was an organic thing; it couldn’t have come from any outsiders. The Bounty
Hunters and Imperial Courts shot callers had to initiate it. The truce was groundbreaking. That energy just rippled like aftershocks throughout the city. Dudes all around the city started talking about a peace treaty: “Cuz or Blood, it don’t matter, yo. We gotta stop this murder and insanity.”

  The impetus came from all the first-generation gang members. Now, a first generation gang member would be my age—at most, a few years older. The thing about gangbanging is, it’s all good when you’re a kid, because you ain’t thinking about the consequences or ramifications of all the dirt you’re doing.

  But when you have children and they become teenagers, then you start to see your kids cycling back into it. You watch that happening—powerless—and that’s when it starts to hurt you.

  We’ve now passed the second generation and are onto a third generation. And a lot of the first-generation gangbangers—the O.G.s—are coming home after long bids. A lot of them have had a change of heart; they’ve realized that the whole gang culture is negative, something they’d like to stop. Actually, at the O.G. level—across L.A.—most of the brothers do want peace.

  The problem is getting that message down to the youngsters. The youngsters want reputations like the O.G.s got. They want the respect the O.G.s got. And as I said, gangbanging is fundamentally based on murder. How you going to tell some young brother to forgive another gangster who killed his uncle or his best friend or his father? How you going to tell him to sit down and make a truce with guys he’s sworn to take vengeance against?

  These young brothers are in it for life. Gangbanging ain’t like a club that you can leave whenever you want. This is some real blood-war shit.

  When the truce of ’92 jumped off, I connected with one of my boys named Malik Spellman. He asked me to go down into Watts with him. I’m not from Watts, but I was well received. The brothers in Watts gave me love, and I connected to the gangsters down there. A brother named Tony Bogard from the Imperial Courts. A brother named Ty Stick out of the Bounty Hunters. We made a song and video called “Gotta Lotta Love.” The video was shot at the start of the truce. In the lyrics, I just threw my excitement out there: