![]() I had an album out already on Warner Bros. I’d already transferred from being on the streets and making money illegally to making record money, so I was done with my previous stuff. I was selling a nice amount of records, but not nationally. You had the same parachute pants, so shut up.” “Colors” (1988) ![]() A lot of people try to ask me, “Oh man, I saw you in Breakin’,” and I say, “Before you say anything, I want to see a picture of what you looked like when your mother took you to see that movie. I watched Breakin’ 2, me out there singin’ for the Miracles, and it was kinda corny. You’re growing and learning as an artist. There’s very few actors who are gonna look back at their first performance and say, “Wow, I was right in there.” It’s called payin’ your dues. ICE-T: Well, I don’t think I was a good actor yet. STEREOGUM: You’ve said in the past that you weren’t happy with your performance in Breakin’ or the sequel. They didn’t want to keep it raw, they wanted a little more colorful. They put me into wardrobe, and it was more flamboyant than how we were really livin’. I’m called “Featured Rap Talker” in the movie. I happened to be the guy onstage that was the MC in the real club, so I got cast in the movie. These producers walked in there and saw the breakdancers and rappers and said, “We’re gonna make a movie.” So they literally used everybody that was in there - Shaba Doo, Boogaloo Shrimp. We had Madonna show up there, Adam Ant, Malcolm McLaren - it was a very cool crowd. It was one of the early hip-hop clubs that was done in the underground scene, with white kids that were getting into hip-hop. ICE-T: There was a club in Los Angeles called The Radio. He’s also one of the nicest people I’ve ever interviewed, and even though we could’ve talked for hours longer than the time allotted, in that time he shared plentiful insight and informative anecdotes as we traipsed through the myriad benchmarks of his storied career. His long-running metal band Body Count is up for a Grammy this year for their latest album, Carnivore. Born Tracy Marrow in 1958, he’s made hit records in the rock and rap arenas, collaborated with an array of legends across genre, and has one of the most perfect Twitter accounts in existence. But even if Ice wasn’t an SVU regular, his career would be undeniably impressive. Obviously, Ice-T is always on his grind regularly acting on a network TV show for more than two decades is proof enough of that. His press schedule was so jam-packed that, three-quarters into our conversation, he briefly vanished after his laptop died because he forgot to plug it in earlier. “This is the background I put up to signify being on quarantine.” In reality, when we spoke last week he was in the midst of a marathon of interviews scheduled during a day off from shooting Law And Order: SVU, which he’s starred on for over two decades straight. “I’m incarcerated right now,” the 62-year-old actor and musician says with a wide grin when he pops up into my Zoom room, with a custom background that makes it look like he’s in a grody jail cell.
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