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                                                                                PROFILE, Page 66

The Fire Around The Ice


He is moving from "gangster rap" to hard rock and Hollywood, but
ICE-T still preaches the same message: the reality of the
streets

By SALLY B. DONNELLY


    "Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat," wrote
Robert Frost. Tracy Marrow's poetry takes a switchblade and
deftly slices life's jugular. Since his 1987 debut album, Rhyme
Pays, Marrow -- who goes by his high school nickname of Ice-T
-- has set off critics who accuse him of glorifying crime,
homophobia, sexism and violence. His profanity-laced
descriptions of gang life in a Los Angeles ghetto fostered a
genre of hard-core black music known as "gangster rap." Tipper
Gore of the Parents' Music Resource Center singled out Ice-T for
the "vileness of his message."

    Last week more people were trying to shut him down. A
group of law-enforcement officials in Texas called for a boycott
of Time Warner, the parent company of his record label, Sire
(and of TIME) because of one of his recent tracks, Cop Killer
("I'm 'bout to bust some shots off/ I'm 'bout to dust some cops
off"). Said Doug Elder, president of the Houston Police Officers
Association: "You mix this with the summer, the violence and a
little drugs, and they are going to unleash a reign of terror
on communities all across this country."

    But what guardians of respectability find vile is
considered compelling and clever by the hundreds of thousands
of fans who have made Ice-T the world's most consistently
successful hard-core rapper. Despite very little radio play or
MTV time -- his cuts are too hot for the air -- he has produced
four gold-selling albums. His fans are mainly young males, but
they range through all races and classes, and they can be found
from his adopted hometown of Los Angeles to Harlem and Harvard
-- where his 1989 album, The Iceberg Freedom of Speech, was No.
1 on the campus charts.

    Ice-T does not want to be adored. He'd prefer to be
shocking -- and well paid. For the most part, he lets his music
speak for itself because he knows trying to reason with his
critics is wasting time. "The way I rap, and what I rap about,
is based in reality," he says angrily. "I don't really care what
people who don't give me a chance say."

    After the defiance, though, comes Ice-T's real message. "I
write to create some brain-cell activity," he insists. "I want
people to think about life on the street, but I don't want to
bore them. I want them to ask themselves, `Does it matter to
me?' "

    The recent violence in Los Angeles, says Ice-T, "only
vindicated what I've been rapping about for years. I have been
one of the voices from the 'hood trying to let you know what
kids on the street are thinking." To him, the riots in the wake
of the Rodney King verdict were predictable. "If you didn't
expect the rebellion after such a miscarriage of justice, then
it just shows how out of touch you are."

    What about the profanity? Ice-T sighs in frustration.
"You're overhearing black guys on a street corner talking to one
another. It's s--- talking, a dialect. But people take it so
seriously." What he fails to realize is that people do take
words seriously, and understandably so, when they are so
offensive and degrading. When Ice-T sang on one of his first
albums about a friend who "f---ed the bitch with a flashlight/
Pulled it out, left the batteries in/ So he could get a charge
when he begins," he let his own definition of "reality" overcome
his responsibility.

    To Ice-T, the language issue comes down to one of race. "A
lot of terms we use on the street don't have the same
connotation in white America. They shouldn't sweat us on what
words we use with each other. I hate to say rap is a black
thing, but sometimes it is."

    In his early 30s, Ice-T is a decade older than many of his
rap compatriots, and that shows in his work. He is perhaps the
only rapper who can admit that he was wrong. He has eliminated
antigay messages from his raps. "I used to make fun of gay
people, call them fags," he says. "But my homeys weren't down
with that, so now I lay off." He has also left the most extreme,
racist gangster rap to the likes of Ice Cube. Instead, he now
focuses his energy on what he calls "intelligent hoodlum"
material. Quincy Jones says Ice-T's work has "the best poetic
quality of any rapper, and the strongest narrative I've ever
heard."

    His latest album, O.G. Original Gangster, is his best and
most balanced. Ice-T's vivid writing and rich delivery detail
life on the streets with his trademark realism and humor, but
the sometimes tragic consequences of that life are also laid
out. On New Jack Hustler, which was nominated for a 1992
Grammy, he sketches the dilemma of a dope dealer:

    Turned the needy into the greedy
    With cocaine
    My success came speedy.
    Got me twisted
    Jammed into a paradox
    Every dollar I get
    Another brother drops.


    Other tracks deal with child abuse and drive-by shootings,
and there are none of the patently sexist raps of earlier years.

    Tracy Marrow has been relying on himself since he moved to
Los Angeles to live with relatives when he was just a boy. He
was born in Newark but traveled west after his parents died
when he was in elementary school. Although he lived in Windsor
Hills, a middle-class section of L.A., he claims he began
hanging with a rough crowd. He plays up these tough-guy roots
to legitimize his hard raps, although a teacher at his alma
mater, Crenshaw High, remembers Marrow as a milder sort whose
most serious offenses were trying to get into basketball games
without paying.

    While still a teenager, Ice-T joined the Army and
completed a four-year stint, spending most of his free time
deejaying parties for his fellow soldiers. There he realized
that he was "better at talking than mixing the records." Marrow
knew his voice and quick wit could take him places, but admits
"the concept of actually getting paid for rapping was too
farfetched to even think about."

    He had signed up for the military to "get responsible"
after getting a high school girlfriend pregnant. But when he
returned to Los Angeles, he drifted into crime. His homeys had
stepped up their activities to robbery, credit-card fraud and
even arson. Despite his musical ambitions, Marrow rejoined his
crew and started making serious money. He says now of that
period, "I thought I'd be a hustler for the rest of my life."

    A local promoter had him record The Coldest Rap in 1982,
which led to deejay stints around L.A., including shows at the
now defunct Radio dance club downtown. For $50 a week, Ice-T
spun the records and rapped to mostly white crowds. "I had this
double identity," he says. "Deejaying for trendy kids on the
weekends, and doing the dirt on the street the rest of the
time."

    His deejay gigs led to another career move that, some have
since suggested, should supplant his rapping. He was offered a
small part in the dance movie Breakin' in 1984. "They said
they'd pay me $500 a day. S---, I was spending that on
sneakers," he laughs. But his street boys, according to Ice-T,
wouldn't let him turn down the part. A few of the gang had
already been taken down by the police or other gangs. "You got
a chance," Ice-T recalls them saying. "White people like you,
man. They've got their hand out; you should take it." His second
big-screen appearance, as an undercover cop in last year's
surprise hit New Jack City, brought critical acclaim. He will
share top billing in Universal's The Looters, a movie about a
team of industrial-security experts, originally scheduled for
release in July but delayed and retitled after the Los Angeles
riots.

    Ice-T says he owes his success to his friends from the old
days. As he sings in Mind over Matter,

    I made a promise
    To my brothers in street crime
    We'd get paid with the use
    Of a sweet rhyme
    We put our minds together
    Made the tracks clever
    Now we're checkin'
    More bank than ever.


    Some of Ice-T's friends now work in various capacities for
Ice-T -- at his music production company, Rhyme Syndicate, his
merchandising business or the auto repair shop he owns in Los
Angeles. Jorge Hinojosa, who has served without a written
contract as Ice-T's manager for nine years, says loyalty and
trust are vital to the performer.

    "There's a very small inner circle around Ice that is hard
to break into. It's a carryover from the street attitude: I got
your back if you got mine." Ice-T also keeps in touch with some
of his friends who are now in prison, sending them tapes or
packages.

    Ice-T's loyalty extends to helping out his crew by funding
their projects. Ernie C., a friend since Crenshaw High, started
a rock band with Ice-T's support. Now they've joined forces to
create a new band, Body Count, with Ice-T as the lead singer.
Ice-T is a rock and heavy-metal fan of long standing, and,
rapid-fire, he rattles off his favorites: Black Flag, Judas
Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Hendrix, Slayer. "I like the
aggressiveness and anger of hard rock," he says, and he proved
it last summer by appearing with a collection of metal bands on
the successful Lollapalooza tour.

    Offstage, Ice-T seems far removed from his
writing-performing persona of a hard-rap hustler. For the most
part, he speaks quietly, his light brown eyes narrowing as he
makes a point. At an even 6 ft., light skinned and dressed
casually but neatly with his Nike shoestrings tied just so, he
can blend into the crowd at his usual hangouts, from Spago to
Red Lobster Inn. He relishes the rewards of his success -- his
house in the Hollywood hills, for example, where he lives with
his girlfriend Darlene Ortiz and their six-month-old baby boy;
his collection of half a dozen sports and antique cars; his
trips to such spots as Hawaii and Asia. But he knows whom to
thank for it all. "It wasn't a cop or social worker who got me
here," he says. "It was my boys, like the ones now on death row,
who are the reason I'm doing it. That's why there's a real
allegiance to the street in my music."

    The same attraction that Ice-T once felt for life on the
edge holds for rap fans today, and he knows it. "There's no
feeling like robbing somebody. It's a weird, warped thrill," he
acknowledges. But with convoluted logic, he warns, "It's wrong,
and it can also get you killed." He simplistically assumes
listeners can draw the line between sitting back and enjoying
the thrill and participating in it. The rapper claims his music
encourages people to action but not to crime. "My raps aim to
give people courage. Listening to me gives you the ability to
say `Screw the system' if it's doing you wrong."

    That attitude, and the fact that young people are
listening to it, says Ice-T, is what has traditional America
running scared. Law-enforcement authorities spend time
monitoring rap groups like N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew, and only end
up bringing more attention to the groups. "That rap is
considered more dangerous than heavy metal, even Satan worship,
only shows where America's fears lie," he says.

    Strange, then, that one of America's most fearsome rappers
will soon be a comic-book star. DC Comics has planned a
three-part series featuring the rapper. Ice-T is also using his
experience with gangs for more than albums. He frequently speaks
to high school students about the dangers of a life of crime.
In the meantime, as Ice-T sings on the title track of the O.G.
album,

    I rap for brothers just like myself
    Dazed by the game
    In a quest for extreme wealth.
    But I kick it hard and real
    One wrong move, your cap's peeled . . .
    Point blank and untwisted
    No imagination needed, cause I lived it.
    This aint no f---ing joke
    This s--- is real to me.
    I'm Ice-T.