Ice-T Quotes

Redemption just means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong.

My father's family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn't a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude.

People think I'll kill you if you make a joke. I compare it to Clint Eastwood. I've only seen Clint Eastwood in movies. You think if you make a joke to Eastwood, he might shoot you.

Anybody who has anybody in the armed forces, I don't care how well-trained they are, there's nothing safe about it.

I write rhymes with addition and algebra, mental geometry.

When you start a business, go for the lowest hanging fruit.

I think everybody wants to redeem themselves after they've done something that might be considered negative. I don't think anyone wants to go to the grave negative.

I've got a phone,
answer machine, TV set,
computer, hand grenade
- everything you need
to run a business in
Los Angeles.

When I was younger I never drank. I never drank, I never did any weed or drugs or anything because I felt it would compromise my position. I was an orphan, and I had a feeling like if I ever hit the ground I may never get back up.

Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.

I'm pretty open book, I'm also the kind of person that will say, 'That's none of your business,' too.

I was a pretty bad person early in my life.

Who can protect themselves from betrayal? The day your brother wakes up and plans to do you dirty, there's no defense against that.

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they're scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don't know if you've seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it's like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.

That became the signature Ice-T style - rhymes that were "topical" and "vividly optical." To me it was street-level journalism, real-life observations told in poetry. That's the vision I tried to bring to all my recordings.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

Ultimately I am happy that everybody is embracing hip hop and the sounds from the streets.

Yeah, it's legal in the United States. It's part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police.

Rapping is a vocal delivery, so you can do it without being part of hip-hop and not knowing what hip-hop is about.

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

It's like they want to shut rappers down. They want to silence us. The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street.

You know, the radio never wanted you to speak about anything, so the music is kinda influenced by the hands of the radio which wants to homogenize it and dilute it and sanitize it. And for the most part, nobody's takin' the time to seek out the cats that are still tryin' to talk, so they have a difficult time being heard.

I think singing and acting go hand in hand. Take an R&B singer: one song says, 'I love you,' the next is, 'Baby, don't leave me', the next is, 'If you leave me I don't care.' You have to drop in and out of different perspectives.

Well, I am very happy that I was able to play a part in bringing music from the streets onto the radio and into modern culture, I worked very hard and always believed in the sounds I was creating.

Because I first made my name as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume I'm strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey.

I've been in crime for a long time and I know that the actual move isn't the actual crime: the crime continues [afterwards].

I always knew that I had to direct. That was something I'd wanted to do. Finally, I was just looking at the situation and I said, "I wanna document hip-hop, as an art form, seeing how a lot of people don't take it seriously."

Every once in a while, I hear somebody call me Tracy to try to let me know that they know me, you know, personally. But most of my real friends will call me Trey, or 'Ice' was basically short for Iceberg. So they would call me - some of my boys call me Berg.

The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.

The rock'n'roll lifestyle really is available to anybody that's got money. Honestly. Once you get money, if you interview a hundred people with money, they'll all sound like rock stars.

My father was a dark-skinned brother, but my mother was a very fair-skinned lady. From what I understand, she was Creole; we think her people originally came from New Orleans. She looked almost like a white woman, which meant she could pass - as folks used to say back then. Her hair was jet-black. She was slim and very attractive.

Hip-hop is the fountain of youth. You just don't grow up if you were there. My son's 20. I'm on the same channel he's on. We wear the same clothes, we feel the same thing. It's a weird, weird generation we're in right now.

As long as I'm around the cats in the hip hop scene, they'll throw me a track and I'll write a rap over it.

With acting, you have to take it seriously because the other actors are putting in a lot of effort - and if you say, 'I'm just bullshitting here', it's like dissing 'em.

One of the things about powerful people is they have the ability to make it look easy.

Oh man, nobody is as tough as Mr T. Ice T is pretty tough though as well.

Half the rhymes you write, you're saying that you're better than the other MC. That's how we keep the craft sharp.

Don't get too hung up on working with any one person, because it's like a game of checkers where dudes are hopping over one another all the time, shouting, "King me, motherfucker!" It's checkers, yo. But with a lot of money at stake.

No, I'll stay Ice-T. This is what got me here, I'm always going to stay true to that. If it weren't for hip-hop I wouldn't be doing all these other things.

I'm a big Brad Pitt fan. He's really talented. I think a lot of men are intimidated by him, saying he's just a pretty boy or whatever, but he is a bad man. I think he can act.

It's just that when you heard hip-hop, no matter where you were, it was a culture that kind of made you want to try to be part of it. Whether you thought you were an artist, whether you thought you could be a DJ, whether you thought you could breakdance, or whether you thought you could rap. It was the kind of culture that had a lot of open doors.

Now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power.

The more you try to suppress us, the larger we get.

I think all music - not just rap - has fallen into this very diluted, delusional state, where everyone's singing about money and having cars, and having all this fun; when really, people are losing their homes.

In the mornin' po-lice at my door
Fresh adidas squeak across the bathroom floor
Out the back window.. I make a escape
Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape

If one person comes in and says, this is the way life should be, I think you're asking for chaos. I think you gotta let different people live different ways. It's a big world.

A lot of people play single to work some angle. I'm always about keeping it real. If that's how I'm living, that's how I'm living.

The best way to compliment an emcee is to say his lyrics. That's how you say, "Hello."

I don't have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.

If you get into crime you gotta know that everybody's a criminal and everybody's a liar, and everybody has the potential to backstab you, because it's not an honest profession. So don't go into crime and look for honesty.

I have to grow with my audience.

I've evolved, but I'm the same dude, I'm just in a different place. We all change, we all grow. I shouldn't be in the same place that I was 30 years ago; I should be more intelligent, you know.

I'm not going to allow anybody to hold a badge up over me or a cross or any other power symbol and say I'm going to kill you and you're just going to kneel down to me because I'm the law.

I don't watch daytime television, I have a job, I work and, you know, I think daytime television is really for women.

There's a point where a cop pulls you out of that car and starts abusing you or beating on you and at that moment he is no longer within the law.

I've never been a cop hater. You know, when I was breaking the law, the cops were the opponent. I just thought I could outsmart them.

I was doing the wrong thing, at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. It's like if you're dealing with somebody who is high on drugs, they can look back at it and say, "Wow, I was destroying myself." But during the period, they think they're doing the right thing. You just have to let the smoke clear so you can see the whole picture.

You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.

I have to take what I say and make it heavy, so every single bar means something. And there's no riddles in my rhymes. Every single word means something.

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.

I never know if the person I'm shaking hands with is coming to kill me. That's something you have to live with when you cross the lines.

When I got a chance to rap, I just busted my ass. When I got a chance to act, I busted my ass. Anytime I get a chance. I'm not wasting time. I won't do it if I'm not doing it 110 percent. You've got to work hard if you want to play hard. I like to play, but I know I gotta bust my ass.

What's bad for the culture is wack rappers that get held in high regard like they're some great thing because it's the flavor of the month, but everybody knows they can't rap. I don't think it's hard, even for somebody who's not hip-hop, to know that that's not good. When you put them up against somebody that can really rhyme, you go, "Okay, I get it. This is what it should sound like."

The right to bear arms is because it's the last form of defense against tyranny.

My father died early. My mother died early. I started hanging with the gangs. I'm on the streets; I'm committing crimes. And the music came along, and this music just took me on a different road.

I'd say people are victims of circumstances and they're limited to the opportunities that they see. Even though there might be more opportunities, you might not see them. You might just think, "I don't have any options." You usually go to the dark side, in that situation.

I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they're told to do.

I mean rappin' to me is easy, it's something you can do over a week.

Ice-T in the music has done some outrageous things.

If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.

I think when people say 'real hip-hop,' they want it more buried in the streets. They want it more connected to the streets and the grime and the roughness of the streets. They don't want the fluff.

When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, 'Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.' That's when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting.

I'm a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.

Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.

I couldn't possibly have lived all the things that Ice-T on the records lived.

I think, people look at me, and they say, 'You were very aggressive,' I say, 'Yeah,' you know, and I've made a better life for myself, for my son, so I should reflect that with my music now. I shouldn't still be rhyming like that; that would be me lying.

I just don't believe that there's any way that you're ever gonna get one peace, because everybody has different ways of seeing life.

AIDS is such a scary thing and it's also the kind of thing that you think won't happen to you. It can happen to you and it's deadly serious.

There is no such thing as a normal family so don't trip off it, just deal with it.

What I'm trying to tell people is that police brutality in the 'hood is nothing new. And the thing is that whether this guy, the cop killer in my song, is real or not, believe it, there are people at that point.

I'm very much against the anonymity of bloggers and social media. I just hate it and I think it's really cowardly.

If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.

Diet food is for lazy people.

When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.

This next record is dedicated to some personal friends of mine, the LAPD. For every cop that has ever taken advantage of somebody, beat 'em down or hurt 'em, because they got long hair, listen to the wrong kinda music, wrong color, whatever they thought was the reason to do it. For every one of those fuckin' police, I'd like to take a pig out here in this parkin' lot and shoot 'em in their mothafuckin' face.

Once I get something going well, I'll risk fucking it up just for the action.

Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls.

Dealing with the old school rappers, you see a lot of humility. When you're new, nothing is wrong. Everything is tight. Because you're trying to hype the world into believing in you.

A lot of times people would offer me movies and, because I'm a car freak, I'd look in a magazine and say, 'How much is this car? If you give me this car I'll show up and do the movie' I call 'em 'sports car flicks'.

Any New York group can come to L.A. and sell out every show, but an L.A. group who goes to New York might not do the same because the audience hasn't been introduced to the group.

You could be a Green Beret and a kid could jump out from behind a building and hit you with a rock. No matter how tough you become in the military, there's a way to die: there's nothing safe about it.

So you don't have to take us too seriously; I mean, we're already intimidating enough on stage.

That's one of the first things that comes out of young people's mouths when they're in love. FOREVER. And that's cool, it's all good-until you get old enough to realize what forever is.

A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.

I think L.A. radio is learning from the Bay. The Bay is a very classic place. Mac Mall, C-Bo, all that stuff, they love their artists, they're old school up there. My first big concert was playing in the Bay; I played the Fillmore.

I've never been competitive with anybody but myself.

We have groups that do that, but I can't rap with the mentality of an 18 year old when I'm in my 30's.

It's not about being mad at everything. It's about being really mad at the right things.

I'm afraid because some police are way out of control. My true feeling with police is this: If they do their job, there's no problem.