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To Ice-T, the language issue comes down to one of race. "A lot of terms we use on the street don't have the same connotation in white America. They shouldn't sweat us on what words we use with each other. I hate to say rap is a black thing, but sometimes it is."
In his early 30s, Ice-T is a decade older than many of his rap compatriots, and that shows in his work. He is perhaps the only rapper who can admit that he was wrong. He has eliminated antigay messages from his raps. "I used to make fun of gay people, call them fags," he says. "But my homeys weren't down with that, so now I lay off." He has also left the most extreme, racist gangster rap to the likes of Ice Cube. Instead, he now focuses his energy on what he calls "intelligent hoodlum" material. Quincy Jones says Ice-T's work has "the best poetic quality of any rapper, and the strongest narrative I've ever heard."
His latest album, O.G. Original Gangster, is his best and most balanced. Ice-T's vivid writing and rich delivery detail life on the streets with his trademark realism and humor, but the sometimes tragic consequences of that life are also laid out. On New Jack Hustler, which was nominated for a 1992 Grammy, he sketches the dilemma of a dope dealer:
Turned the needy into the greedy
With cocaine
My success came speedy.
Got me twisted
Jammed into a paradox
Every dollar I get
Another brother drops.
Other tracks deal with child abuse and drive-by shootings, and there are none of the patently sexist raps of earlier years.
Tracy Marrow has been relying on himself since he moved to Los Angeles to live with relatives when he was just a boy. He was born in Newark but traveled west after his parents died when he was in elementary school. Although he lived in Windsor Hills, a middle-class section of L.A., he claims he began hanging with a rough crowd. He plays up these tough-guy roots to legitimize his hard raps, although a teacher at his alma mater, Crenshaw High, remembers Marrow as a milder sort whose most serious offenses were trying to get into basketball games without paying.
While still a teenager, Ice-T joined the Army and completed a four-year stint, spending most of his free time deejaying parties for his fellow soldiers. There he realized that he was "better at talking than mixing the records." Marrow knew his voice and quick wit could take him places, but admits "the concept of actually getting paid for rapping was too farfetched to even think about."
He had signed up for the military to "get responsible" after getting a high school girlfriend pregnant. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he drifted into crime. His homeys had stepped up their activities to robbery, credit-card fraud and even arson. Despite his musical ambitions, Marrow rejoined his crew and started making serious money. He says now of that period, "I thought I'd be a hustler for the rest of my life."
A local promoter had him record The Coldest Rap in 1982, which led to deejay stints around L.A., including shows at the now defunct Radio dance club downtown. For $50 a week, Ice-T spun the records and rapped to mostly white crowds. "I had this double identity," he says. "Deejaying for trendy kids on the weekends, and doing the dirt on the street the rest of the time."