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His deejay gigs led to another career move that, some have since suggested, should supplant his rapping. He was offered a small part in the dance movie Breakin' in 1984. "They said they'd pay me $500 a day. S---, I was spending that on sneakers," he laughs. But his street boys, according to Ice-T, wouldn't let him turn down the part. A few of the gang had already been taken down by the police or other gangs. "You got a chance," Ice-T recalls them saying. "White people like you, man. They've got their hand out; you should take it." His second big-screen appearance, as an undercover cop in last year's surprise hit New Jack City, brought critical acclaim. He will share top billing in Universal's The Looters, a movie about a team of industrial- security experts, originally scheduled for release in July but delayed and retitled after the Los Angeles riots.
Ice-T says he owes his success to his friends from the old days. As he sings in Mind over Matter,
I made a promise
To my brothers in street crime
We'd get paid with the use
Of a sweet rhyme
We put our minds together
Made the tracks clever
Now we're checkin'
More bank than ever.
Some of Ice-T's friends now work in various capacities for Ice-T -- at his music production company, Rhyme Syndicate, his merchandising business or the auto repair shop he owns in Los Angeles. Jorge Hinojosa, who has served without a written contract as Ice-T's manager for nine years, says loyalty and trust are vital to the performer.
"There's a very small inner circle around Ice that is hard to break into. It's a carryover from the street attitude: I got your back if you got mine." Ice-T also keeps in touch with some of his friends who are now in prison, sending them tapes or packages.
Ice-T's loyalty extends to helping out his crew by funding their projects. Ernie C., a friend since Crenshaw High, started a rock band with Ice-T's support. Now they've joined forces to create a new band, Body Count, with Ice- T as the lead singer. Ice-T is a rock and heavy-metal fan of long standing, and, rapid-fire, he rattles off his favorites: Black Flag, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Hendrix, Slayer. "I like the aggressiveness and anger of hard rock," he says, and he proved it last summer by appearing with a collection of metal bands on the successful Lollapalooza tour.
Offstage, Ice-T seems far removed from his writing-performing persona of a hard-rap hustler. For the most part, he speaks quietly, his light brown eyes narrowing as he makes a point. At an even 6 ft., light skinned and dressed casually but neatly with his Nike shoestrings tied just so, he can blend into the crowd at his usual hangouts, from Spago to Red Lobster Inn. He relishes the rewards of his success -- his house in the Hollywood hills, for example, where he lives with his girlfriend Darlene Ortiz and their six-month-old baby boy; his collection of half a dozen sports and antique cars; his trips to such spots as Hawaii and Asia. But he knows whom to thank for it all. "It wasn't a cop or social worker who got me here," he says. "It was my boys, like the ones now on death row, who are the reason I'm doing it. That's why there's a real allegiance to the street in my music."