You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.
Ice T
When you start a business, go for the lowest hanging fruit.
The right to bear arms is because it's the last form of defense against tyranny.
I think the most successful are the most paranoid. The first thing people do when they buy a mansion is they build the biggest wall you could possibly build around it. What happens is, now you become a target. If I go into the hood, I'm at a disadvantage. They could carry guns. I can't. They can hit me in the face. I can't.
I ain't got no beef with east coast, I think it's just being hyped up.
If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.
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.
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.
An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.
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 have the core hip-hop, which would just be beats and breaks, more something like what you hear with DJ Premier. Then you get into the more highly produced hip-hop, which is something like what DJ Khaled does. But at some point, it starts to get kind of pop.
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.
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.
When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
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 don't have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.
I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.
I don't feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don't think it is difficult.
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.
Some music comes from a real place; some music comes from your imagination. It's difficult to find out what's real and what's not, especially with the gangster stuff.
As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That's why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.
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.
The next day, I got a phone call from him and he told me to come and read for a movie called New Jack City. So I went over there and they told me I was gonna wear dreads and play a cop.
I'm competitive in that I would like to outsell my last record.
If I'm going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.
Ultimately I am happy that everybody is embracing hip hop and the sounds from the streets.
I started rapping before anybody had ever bought a car from it. It was truly about the art form and the culture, more so than now, where it's a successful way to make money. Back then you had to be doing it because you liked it.
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.
So you don't have to take us too seriously; I mean, we're already intimidating enough on stage.
Jay-Z is like a rap-savant, he doesn't have to write the rhymes down, he can create complex raps in his head. I mean he does memorize it, he just doesn't write it down on paper. He doesn't freestyle onto the track, it's all thought out.
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.
Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls.
The best way to listen to the album is to put it on, get some Moet, lay back with your boys, and kick it.
'New Jack City' was a perfect marriage of music and film. They used a lot of musicians: myself, Christopher Williams. People that were popular because of their music were given the chance to act. And the soundtrack was incredible.
Most interviewers are looking for a headline. They're not skilled. They're looking for shock value.
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.
So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.
When I was in the 12th grade, I got my girlfriend pregnant. I just got out of school, she was a 10th-grader. I'm a teen parent, and I'm at a point where I'm like, 'Man I've got to do something.'
I make an effort to keep it as real as I possibly can.
I'll never sell 14 million like Hammer, I just wanna do a good Ice-T show.
The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.
I'm just disillusioned with the hip-hop sound right now. It's too materialistic. You know, I'm the kind of guy ... I can't do that. If you track my movement, you'll never see a picture of me with any girl that wasn't mine, or my own car. My jewelry, my clothes. What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?!
If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it.
A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.
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.
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.
I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.
I've never been competitive with anybody but myself.
Everything we do helps the new artists in the long run.
I've never read for a movie, I've always been given them.
