Beverly Keel, chair and professor at Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of Record Industry, Murfreesboro, Tenn., interviewing Ice-T. (VT Photo)
REPORTIG FROM NASHVILLE — Musician, rapper, songwriter, actor and record producer and executive Ice-T said he feels rap is turning back to the time when the disco beat was more important than the message.
"There are still some out there with a message and there is still a market for the message," he said, while being interviewed on stage during the International Entertainment Buyers Association 2017 Conference, held in Nashville, Oct. 15-17. He was interviewed by Beverly Keel, chair of Middle Tennessee State University's Department of Recording Industry.
Ice-T, 59, a.k.a. Tracy Marrow, told the large audience of IEBA attendees about his early days as a rapper and some of those challenges, such as taking the band on the road.
"They had never seen poor white people," Ice-T said. "We would be on a bus and they would look out at the land going by and they couldn't believe there was that much space. They would fight over a block in the neighborhood."
He told how he and his band distinguished between a "real" promoter and not the real thing once they began traveling more. He said if they were picked up at the airport by the promoter in his car and made stops on the way to the performance location, such as to "drop something off at Mom's," they knew they hadn't been hired by the real thing.
He told about a date at a location in South America. They were picked up at the airport by a man who, to Ice-T, seemed to be spending too much time checking out the surroundings.
The band loaded into the guy's vehicle and headed away from the airport. When they saw a road block at a check-point up ahead, the driver suddenly turned and took them off-road, saying only, "I can't go through the road check point."
They played that night in a large tent for 5,000 people, in the middle of nowhere. At one point, someone stood up on stage and shot an AK-47 into the air.
"I thought, man, these guys are for real," he said.
Ice figured they hadn't gotten all the important information from the person that had booked them for that particular performance. That person forgot to mention they would be playing for a group with ties to the Basque terrorist group, which emerged in the wake of a brutal crackdown by the Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco against Basque language and culture in the 1950s.
Ice-T's legacy dates back to the very beginnings of West Coast hip-hop. For him, it was during a time of gang bangers. His life consisted of stealing and selling weed and, he said, making rhymes for the Crips to avoid trouble.
He joined the army for a stint, and that was where he found mix tapes of Grandmaster Flash, a.k.a. Joseph Saddler, a Bajan-American hip-hop recording artist and DJ. After coming home from the army, he rapped in the clubs at night and worked for crews stealing jewelry during the day.
One night after a gig, Ice-T fell asleep at the wheel and suffered a serious car accident resulting in a 10-week stay in a veteran's hospital. During that stay, he had only one visitor. He realized he was not very well liked, and that realization led to a commitment to change.
He released his first record "Reckless" and was cast in the movie "Breakin’" in the early 1980s. That recognition brought on a contract with Warner Bros. His first major label release was the gold-seller "Rhyme Pays."
In 1988, he penned the title track to the movie "Colors." That brought him national acclaim.
"Power," the best selling album of his career, followed soon after. His 1991 O.G. Original Gangster is widely considered Ice-T’s greatest album. Ice-T and his band Body Count played Lollapalooza that year, at a time when few white kids would go to see an Ice-T concert.
Ice-T was mired in controversy at times. For example, one month after Body Count released the song “Cop Killer” in 1992, a jury handed down the Rodney King not-guilty verdict and the city of Los Angeles exploded in protest.
The song infuriated authorities. President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle condemned it and the band, and there was monumental pressure on Warner Bros./Time Warner to pull the song. The band was threatened with arrest if they performed “Cop Killer” live.
Four months after its release, “Cop Killer” was removed from the Body Count album at Ice-T’s request.
“I’ve always tried to rhyme from an honest, truthful point," he said. "You have the right to say anything, but be prepared for what that might bring back to you. If I want a problem, then I’m good with it because I asked for it. But this wasn’t that. That song wasn’t a call to arms. It was just a song.”
As Ice was making headlines, his film and television career was taking off, with roles in New Jack City, Ricochet, and Johnny Mnemonic and the beginnings of a flourishing television career.
Today, Ice-T is in his 19th season starring as “Detective Fin Tutuola” in NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the fourth-longest-running scripted primetime TV series in the U.S.
In 2012, he produced and directed the acclaimed documentary "Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap," which was an official selection for the Sundance Film Festival.
Earlier this year, Body Count released the powerful track “No Lives Matter” from its sixth studio album "Bloodlust. ”