The hardcore verses and robust delivery on “Colors” paved the way for Power that fall, a forceful effort that eradicated any trace of a sophomore slump. Not even a year after Rhyme Pays, Ice-T scored a Hot 100 hit with the eponymous track from the Dennis Hopper-helmed 1988 film Colors, foreshadowing his foray into the acting world.
“6 in the morning, police at my door / Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor,” he raps on “6 ‘N The Mornin,’” which borrows its flow from Schooly D's "P.S.K." “Out my back window I make my escape / Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape.” Even his freestyles painted vivid pictures of his world, one that was deeply mysterious to a huge swath of Americans at the time. Like Slick Rick back east, he could tell a full-on story in rhyme. While a delayed adolescent mindview shines through on a couple of its tracks, particularly on the goofy “Sex,” few others at the time could contend with Ice-T’s lyrical potency. The album delivered hard-hitting jams like “6 ‘N The Mornin’” and “Pain,” which built up his image as a street-hardened hustler with impeccable mic skills. One of the era’s strongest full-length debuts, the record finds him backed by beats from Afrika Islam, a producer connected to the Rock Steady Crew and the Zulu Nation, and DJ scratches by Evil E. Being the baddest wasn’t just something you claimed, but rather a prize to earn and then defend constantly, and almost cyclically, amid a fiercely competitive field on two coasts.Īfter a handful of singles, Ice-T officially threw himself into the ring at the age of 29, with 1987’s Rhyme Pays. Mid-1980s hip-hop may seem quaint by today’s standards, but at the time, it was as mean as the streets themselves. Of course, if you follow him on Twitter, you already knew that.
To that end, he recently announced that a new album from the band was in the works, with recording to begin sometime next month. When he does make music nowadays, it typically happens with Body Count, the heavy-metal-meets-hardcore-punk group he started in 1990. In addition to his nearly 20 seasons of SVU, where his detective persona remains the series’ second longest-serving character behind Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson, he also hosts the fittingly branded In Ice Cold Blood, a true crime show on the Oxygen Network. These days, you’re less likely to find Ice-T rhyming on the mic than mugging on your television. Often at the fore of this battle, Ice-T served as a proverbial lightning rod for hip-hop, emerging as one of its most candid figures well before explicit content became a rap norm. As the artist outlines in ”Radio Suckers,” stations regularly shied away from his music over the very same subject matter. Watchdog groups with governmental ties like the Parents Music Resource Center argued that his “gangsta” music glorified violence and corrupted children.
A New Jersey native who moved to Los Angeles during his adolescence, he did this, notably, during a period in history where explicit raps were under attack on multiple levels. Among Ice-T’s many musical accomplishments, which include five RIAA-certified albums and a 1991 Grammy for his Quincy Jones collaboration “Back On The Block,” the artist born Tracy Lauren Marrow paved the way for decades of music from others depicting day-to-day life in low-income communities of color, experiences many would rather have closed their eyes to.
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