by Ice-T
Between me coming out, and then a little later, N.W.A. and Compton’s Most Wanted, we quickly became ’hood heroes. I’d run into street cats and they’d say, “Yo, Ice! Say our name in a record! Rep the 60s!”
Because, let’s be honest: A rapper is nothing more than a glorified cheerleader. You’re always reppin’ something: Bad Boy, Death Row, Dip Set, G-Unit. It’s a kind of cheerleading. But because there were so many inter-set beefs in L.A., I always made sure to rep the whole West. Yo, I said, I’m going for it all. I’ll take the whole California. I’m not going to alienate my fans by claiming a certain area. I’ll represent the whole West Coast player life.
The bangers I knew were always asking me to rep them in my rhymes—but shouting out Hoover or Harlem or Rollin’ 60s? Hell no. I wasn’t coming out yelling “C-C-C-Crip!” or “Fuck a Brim!” like I did in those early rhymes I wrote in high school. My audience for those rhymes was all my Crips homeys anyway.
In fact, when I dropped my first records and did my first larger shows like the one at the Fillmore, people that didn’t know me used to have these big debates about what neighborhood I was from.
“Yo, Ice is Blood.”
“No, Ice is Crip.”
“No, you seen them red-and-white Nikes he had on?”
I would always play the middle. Yeah, I sometimes wore red. Of course, I did that intentionally. I wanted all of L.A. I didn’t want to polarize the city. When I started, you didn’t claim gang affiliation on a record or in a live show. That shit was no joke. It was still way too dangerous to claim. When I was coming out as an artist, I wasn’t about to claim no particular gang and have them other motherfuckers from an opposing set show up at my show and try to kill somebody.
Sure, we had the look. People knew the world we came from. But I wasn’t throwing up sets with my hands or the C-Walk—Crip Walk. All that was around us but you didn’t try to claim it. You didn’t put all that out front in your musical performance.
Years later, after the gang summit and the truce of ’92, it became much safer to claim. The gangs of L.A. are still deep but they tend not to bang as hard on sight. You can have Bloods and Crips in the same proximity nowadays and they won’t fight unless there’s some personal beef between dudes. They’ve slowed it down a lot. Back in the day, it was on sight. You saw an enemy, you’d just take off on him. And given that level of violence and volatility, I didn’t see how it would be an advantage to put specifics of gangster life front-and-center in my music.
FLASH FORWARD A FEW YEARS to the situation with Snoop on Death Row. I don’t think it would have been possible for someone like Snoop and Suge to have worked together five or six years prior to when they started. People outside the gang world don’t understand the degree of politics that went into Snoop linking with Suge. There were lots of raised eyebrows. Because Snoop’s a Crip with 21st Street Insanes from Long Beach, and Suge Knight—well, he’s not a Blood, but he’s strongly connected to the Mob Pirus. When I first started making records, that situation would not have been allowed. It wouldn’t have been tolerated for a cat from 21st Street Insanes and a cat from Mob Pirus to work together making music. The Insane and Pirus shotcallers would have squashed it right away. By the time Snoop got involved with Death Row, in fact, the Crips was banging so hard on other Crips, they wasn’t even worried about no Bloods. But trust me, Snoop and his boys were getting questioned left and right for being with Suge.
I was reppin’ the crime side of it, but it wasn’t to anybody’s advantage to put all that gang content into any of my music. My first rapping partner wasn’t a Crip, wasn’t a Blood—he was a Mexican. Kid Frost was an ése, and in L.A. the éses and the blacks clicked together—except in prison because that’s a whole different tribal situation: The Northern and Southern Mexicans are even at war in the California State pens. But in L.A., we grew up on the streets close to the Mexicans and, by and large, it’s been all good. At least, within hip-hop, it’s like the blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York. A lot of Puerto Ricans were important rappers, DJs, graffiti artists, and break-dancers in the early stages of Bronx hip-hop. It’s the same with the Mexicans in the L.A. hip-hop scene. They got nothing but love from the brothers.
IT WAS ONE NIGHT, in The Radio, that I created my own Black–Mexican love story. My little cameo in the early hip-hop film Breakin’ was shot at The Radio. For the film, they’d converted the place into a club called the Radio-Tron.
That’s where I spotted Darlene Ortiz. She was this Mexican chick in a tight dress with a body that was simply crazy: She looked like she’d been dreamed up by one of those sex-crazed cartoonists who used to airbrush pinup girls on the fuselages of World War II bombers.
People are always fascinated with the bodies of the women I’ve had relationships with—Adrienne, Darlene, and now my wife, Coco. Okay: It’s not too complicated, if this is the type of female you like, then you’re going to search them out. Russell Simmons likes tall women, so all his girls are going to look like six-foot, paper-thin models. I like smaller, more athletic-looking chicks. Pretty faces, tiny waists, big round booties. Darlene fit that type to a T.
She’s from Riverside, California, so being in The Radio in L.A. was like an out-of-town trip for her. I was mesmerized by her. She was dancing in the club, real sexy. I could tell this was a girl who liked to be noticed.
I walked up to her and hit her with my opening line:
“Would you like to be on an album cover?”
Now, at the time I had no record deal. I had no plans on getting a record deal in the near future.
But it’s funny how words—even fly-ass player words—can manifest into reality. Because, of course, Darlene—and especially her body—ended up being on all my early album covers.
We got together, fell in love. For years we had a lockdown good thing. But as I developed, the music business started to spread me out. I had to travel all the time, do interviews, stay out of town for weeks. When we had our son, Ice Tracy Marrow—we all call him Little Ice—that locked Darlene into the house at the very time I needed to spread out.
Looking back on things, I realize that I was like a lot of men—I was not mentally ready for marriage. I don’t think most men are ready for the whole trip until they get out of their thirties.
Darlene and I were passionate and big dreamers. We were just like a lot of kids at that stage. We all get into romantic dreams; we all think it’s going to be forever. 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.
WHEN I FIRST BROKE IN, that was a great era in the L.A. music scene. Things were popping off all around town. Coolio was coming out with his little clique. There was WC, who used to beat-box for Clientele, part of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru. Me and WC have been close friends for years. He’s got a record called “Pay Your Dues,” where he says, “Thanks to Ice-T, I got my foot in the door.” I knew Ice Cube—we became friends; he was a young brother with a lot of charisma who used to come to our shows. He had a group called C.I.A., and they used to do shows at Dr. Dre’s parties. He was still raw back then, but once he came out with N.W.A., Cube was a full-blown beast. He was a monster at that time. By the time we heard him rhyming with N.W.A., I don’t think anyone in L.A. could fuck with Cube.
A crew started to form around me. When you’re coming out of L.A. there’s a lot of groups and people that are trying to get put on. So you tended to form these alliances and networks. That’s how the Rhyme Syndicate was formed. Everlast, later to gain fame with House of Pain, was down with us. Coolio and WC got down with us. And I linked up with Kid Frost. We formed a tight bond and we started doing shows together.
I had my indie records making their noise on the L.A. scene, but I was still strictly known as a local cat. I was still making my home base at The Radio, rocking the mic in the club, introducing various headlining artists who’d come through. First it was t
he pop and new-wave artists, but there came a point in time when all these New York hip-hop artists started to come to the club like Afrika Islam, Grandmaster Caz, and their crews. This was a big thing to me. These were the original MCs from the Boogie-Down Bronx.
It was a trip for me meeting Grandmaster Caz, the influential MC from the Cold Crush Brothers. And to me, one of the great lyricists in hip-hop history. Afrika Islam was another beast; he was the DJ for the Rock Steady Crew. He was so tight with the pioneering DJ Afrika Bambaataa that his nickname was the “Son of Bambaataa.” Islam was also the president of the Zulu Nation. To those of us in L.A. who knew about hip-hop, these cats were legendary. We weren’t under any illusions about the West being the best. No, we knew that these Bronx dudes were the real deal.
Here’s the funny part: When they met me, both Caz and Islam were tripping off why I wanted to rap.
“Why are you trying to do this, Ice?”
“I’m just trying to get into the game, player,” I said. “I’m just trying to get what you got.”
“But why the fuck you wanna rap, man?” Caz said. “You already ballin’!”
It was kind of strange: I wanted the level of respect they had in the music community, but they wanted to be making the kind of paper I was already making. They were street cats and could see it just by looking at me. From years in the hustling game, I had more money than any of the rappers. I already had all the fly designer gear, the custom-made jewelry, drove any European sports car I wanted. It’s hard to imagine it today—given that guys like Jay-Z and Puffy are on the Forbes list of wealthiest businessmen, flying around the world on their private jets—but back in the day, the average drug dealer, pimp, and hustler was pulling in way more money than any rapper could imagine making.
So Grandmaster Caz and Afrika Islam were both staring at me like I was nuts for even wanting to pick up the mic.
“Yo, what the fuck is the matter with you, Ice?”
Sure, we came from different worlds.
They were intrigued with me; I was intrigued with them.
I especially clicked with Islam. Talking to him at the club, I knew I would have to get my act together and make the trip to his hometown. L.A. was trying to put its own stamp on hip-hop, but you couldn’t claim to be serious about the rap game without taking it to New York. To me, being a rapper in L.A. and never gaining acceptance in New York was essentially like not being a rapper at all. New York was the Mecca.
I told Iz, “When I get a record together, I want to come out to New York. Can you help me get on?”
“Bet,” he said.
By the time I had “6 in the Mornin’ ” on wax, and it was making some noise up and down the West Coast, I sent a box of vinyl to Afrika Islam.
“Iz, can you get it spun?” I said.
“Nobody’s gonna spin it, Ice,” Iz told me. “Not unless you come out here to push it.”
So I bought myself a cheap ticket on PEOPLExpress Airlines and got myself out to New York. Soon as I got there, Islam told me the good news: They were playing my record in various clubs and jams around New York.
It was a different-sounding record to New York cats. They were a tough audience to please, but for some reason they were feeling the hardness of that record. They didn’t necessarily like my other records, they didn’t like the faster party stuff, but they liked that edgy B-Side.
When I touched down in New York, it was the cusp of the second wave of hip-hop. Right after the original old-school cats started to fade. The younger generation like Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J had come out. This was still before Public Enemy and Eric B. and Rakim hit the scene.
Islam was able to introduce me to Red Alert and Chuck Chillout and Scott “La Rock”—all the big-time DJs in New York who could make or break a record just by putting it into their rotation. All of them liked “6 in the Mornin’ ” and they started to spin it.
When I came out to New York to push my record, Islam told me he wanted to get me on a track with Melle Mel, on a little label called Posse Records. Just being able to record with Melle Mel—the powerhouse lyricist in Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five—are you kidding me? Now my ego was at an all-time high. I was making the grade. Rolling with the big dogs. To me, these New York cats were on another level.
Grandmaster Caz is definitely charismatic as hell. Melle Mel is a monster lyrically. These cats would write their rhymes right in the studio while the track was playing. On the spur of the moment, they’d pull all this complex poetry out of thin air, just sit down and write the rhyme they were about to spit. I’d never done that. I’d never seen anybody do that. They were pressure players. I had to get better if I wanted to be on their level. But then these cats had been rapping for ten years by the time I met them. This is what they did full-time.
I had enough confidence to know I had my own place in the hip-hop game. I had a different story to tell. See, in hip-hop, it’s all about your content. I had unique content. I didn’t sound like I was mimicking anyone else. I was willing to push the edge. I’d do nasty raps. Violent raps. Real street-reality-based rhymes like “6 in the Mornin’.”
I pushed the boundaries. Nobody had said “nigga,” “ho,” or “muthafucka” on wax before I did. And a lot of subjects and areas that I explored, guys like Grandmaster Caz and Melle Mel—as talented as they were—wouldn’t touch. I never thought I could out-rap any of the New York legends, but I was a bit more thought-provoking than the other rappers in the game. There was nobody else rapping about the streets the way that I did.
In fact, that was the main question about me: Could a guy base an entire a career around something so hard and so negative?
EVERYTHING THAT KICKED OFF for me next was through Afrika Islam’s connections. Through Iz I met this cat Ralph Cooper who had a connect with Seymour Stein up at Sire Records. Now we were talking a major label, part of the Warner Bros. empire. Up till this point, I’d just been recording for small indie labels, mostly selling records out of mom-and-pop stores.
Word comes down that Seymour Stein wants to do a hip-hop compilation album, and he’s already decided on the artists. He wants to use Grandmaster Caz, Melle Mel, Donald D, Bronx Style Bob, and me. Most of these guys already had contractual obligations. Caz had a record deal with Tuff City. Mel was still locked down on Sugar Hill. Donald D had some problems with his label—so I was the only rapper on the compilation who had some experience recording and didn’t have the ball-and-chain of legal paperwork that would fuck up any deal.
So I got my major label deal by default—like a comedy of errors: everybody else had some issues and I was the last man standing. Seymour didn’t understand that there was this West Coast–East Coast thing, didn’t understand that the “authentic” rappers were all from New York and supposedly you couldn’t rap if you were from L.A.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take Ice-T.”
Seymour Stein is a music industry heavyweight, known as one of the real A&R geniuses in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Seymour’s a Jewish cat from Brooklyn with mad game; he signed The Ramones, The Pretenders, Madonna. He’s cut from that cloth of the old-time music executives like Clive Davis, but he’s way more eccentric than Clive. Clive would go out and sign Whitney Houston and Alicia Keyes; Seymour would go take a chance on the Talking Heads. Just a little more bizarre, a bit more avant-garde, more of an edgy cat.
After I heard that he picked me, I went up to his office with Islam.
“Ice-T!” Seymour said, shaking my hand and staring at me a little too long.
“Hey, how you doing, Seymour?”
“You know, Ice, you have the most beautiful eyes.”
I was glancing at Islam, kind of backing away. Moving slowly back toward the door. Islam whispered, “Be cool, man, be cool.” Iz was trying to tell me, This crazy-ass dude’s got the money.
The weirdest thing was the way Seymour was dancing around his office in his socks. And he was blasting some happy-sounding Caribbean music.
; “Ice-T, do you understand what this music is?”
“Naw, man.”
“This is calypso. Do you know what they’re saying? Do you understand calypso?”
“Naw, man. Not really.”
“Well, they’re talking about the issues in Trinidad. They’re talking about the political and social issues. But they’re using a lot of double entendre.”
“Okay.”
I glanced at Islam again. I mean, coming out the ’hood, I didn’t have a clue what this dude Seymour was talking about.
“Just because you don’t understand their music doesn’t make it any less valid. It just means you don’t understand.”
“Okay.”
“And the same way I may not understand all of what you’re saying in your music doesn’t make it less valid. It just means I don’t know your issues.”
I nodded.
“I might not know your issues but I know what you’re trying to do.”
Then he told me that he’d listened to my lyrics and he thought I sounded like Bob Dylan.
I knew who Bob Dylan was, of course. I didn’t know that much about his music, but I knew Seymour was paying me a big compliment.
“Look, I want you to make this record, and I’m going to give you a forty thousand dollar advance.”
That was the cool thing about Seymour Stein. He was the dude who could say, “I’ll give you this money and you guys bring me back a record.” He didn’t want to hold your hand through the whole recording process, or look over your shoulder and give unwanted advice, or have a flunky A&R man in the studio with you telling you how to improve the tracks. He literally wrote us a check for the entire budget of that first album and we walked out the door of his office, ready to roll.
Even back then forty grand wasn’t much of a budget, but we didn’t give a damn. Iz and me walked out of there and bought SB-12 and 909 drum machines. We made the whole album with those two drum machines. We recorded it in New York and mixed it in one night at Secret Sounds studio. Afrika Islam and me put it all together.