In this era of supreme silliness, as the mid 80s eventually bleed into the 90s, it’s fascinating how someone like Ice-T can come across as dangerous merely because he’s serious as hell. A person didn’t necessarily need to lace his rhymes with endless profanities and boasts of crimes committed, guns possessed, ladies disrespected and/or drugs consumed; he only needed to be non-ridiculous and to have a firm grip on the material he was presenting, to establish his credentials as a total badass.
Born Tracy Marrow, the future Ice-T is once again another figure (birth year: 1958) who is way closer in age to our parents than anyone in my peer bracket. With a name like that, a moniker such as T-Bone or something similar might have been easy pickings, but young Tracy fell under the sway of novelist Iceberg Slim to the extent he was fond of quoting lines to his friends, and eventually ran with this theme instead.
But we have to back up quite a bit before we reach this point. Another East Coaster who landed in Los Angeles as a teenager, we can read that as but one factor in the whole cavalcade of points that only seem inevitable in retrospect, informing the public figure we now know: born in Newark, NJ to a black father and Creole mother, Tracy is raised in what sounds a solidly middle class upbringing, at least up until suffering the unthinkable tragedy of losing both parents to heart attacks by the time he was thirteen. Bouncing around for a short while among relatives, Marrow eventually winds up with a fairly well off aunt and uncle in south L.A. Here, his older cousin Earl is coincidentally a major heavy metal aficionado, which surely contributes to Ice-T’s subsequent interest in such; everything else he experiences here, however, directs him toward rap.
In high school he spent his time merely dancing onstage for a band called The Precious Few, but didn’t seriously pursue this avenue as a career. Instead, shortly after graduation, already a father himself, he enlisted in the army, where he subsequently found himself in hot water over going AWOL, among other charges. Still, it was while at a base in Hawaii that he first acquired the equipment to begin screwing around with turntables and DJing, eventually developing some raps of his own to glide atop these beats.
One huge early stroke of good fortune occurs in 1982, when famed rap pioneer Kurtis Blow is judging a mic skills competition and, despite personal reservations about Tracy’s profanity laden rhymes, he can’t ignore the crowd’s overwhelmingly positive response. Kurtis gives Ice-T a perfect 10 score, and the young rapper takes down top prize.
From here, his next big break occurs at the barber shop, of all places, where he’s rapping while getting his hair cut. Unbeknownst to Ice, a producer working for Saturn Records, Willie Strong, is by happenstance sitting in one of the other chairs, and is impressed with this young talent’s dexterous rhyming. From here these two hit the studio pronto, to begin crafting Ice-T’s debut single.
Fast forward to 1988, and following his debut album Rhyme Pays, Ice-T will deliver a one-off single that technically becomes his biggest hit (if not quite most notorious song: that honor will go to Cop Killer, of course, a few years later). Colors, from the film of the same name, will even receive some mainstream radio play, which was almost inconceivable up to that point, for an edgy sounding rap song, dripping with street menace.
Director Dennis Hopper and Warner Bros. originally wanted to use an altogether different song of his, however, Squeeze The Trigger, until Ice wisely insisted he wanted to see a rough cut of the film first. Howling over some ridiculous Rick James jam they were using as the theme song, he persuaded execs to let him contribute something else in place of it. Heading back to the studio with his pal Islam, inspired by the attitude and rhythmic pulse of a King Sun cut called Mythological Rapper, T conjures up a more vivid and realistic urban nightmare than the overhyped movie ever manages to invoke.
It’s the first song of his that I ever personally heard, though already knowing who he was, thanks to the buzz that had built up around the name throughout the halls of my junior high school. I am a nightmare walkin’/ psychopath talkin’ he cautions by way of introduction, and as we at that age are about on par maturity-wise with your average hand-wringing pundit, I too mistake Ice-T to be talking about himself, rather than offering social commentary. We can maybe name this phenomenon the Axl Rose Conundrum, in light of the misperceptions (he claims) and wee spot o’ trouble One in a Million generated. But while a relatively squeaky clean Ice-T, like any other proper rock star, will gladly lean into this “dangerous” image, it’s amusing to consider that a bunch of clueless teenaged girls and boys in vanilla, middle American states are hugely responsible for creating it. Not that this really matters. He is after all an actor, selling this tale in legitimate fashion his only job.
Regarding the movie itself, however, he is lamentably not present within it. Nonetheless Colors, which stars Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as cops going to war against L.A. gangs, is a reasonably effective, more gritty than hokey vehicle, with this theme song the perfect aural extension. Just to hear a snatch of the song as my parents are flipping channels in the car is enough to have it in my head the rest of the day, or sometimes I don’t even need that much. We live in L.A., we don’t die/ we just multiply is Ice’s recurring, highly memorable refrain, and you don’t doubt the veracity of this statement for a second.
The above excerpt is but a sliver of my extended essay on Ice-T, found in my latest music history book, Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993. If this grunge-era recap seems like your cup of strong, independently brewed java, you can order it direct from me in a couple different places:
Finally, here’s the recommended book of the week:
Is a relationship with someone she’s never seen below the shoulders worth risking her career?
Like so many love stories, they met on the job. Unlike most of those stories, they had never been in the same room.
Hazel Rogers works remotely as a Communications Specialist at FutureApp and strives to advance her career.
When Hazel is assigned a major project which places her on a small team with her long-time mentor Sam, things start to heat up between them. Hazel knows they can never be in a relationship. They face so many HR concerns, not to mention living clear across the country from each other!
Is a relationship with someone she’s never seen below the shoulders worth risking her career?
Available where all fine books are sold — Get your copy today!
