Rappin’ with ICE-T

Press, 12 April 1989, Page 24

Rappin’ with ICE-T

RUSSELL BAILLIE joins in the palaver with a rap artist from East L.A.

If rap is the sound of the streets, then Ice-T knows the territory better than most. The way he tells it, he could still be making more money on those streets illegally than he does rapping. Then again, he could be in jail. Or dead.

But his change from infamous to famous has at least helped move the Los Angeles beat man out of his old “war-zone” neighbourhood into Hollywood. As well, he’s just rapped to packed houses in Europe.

And there’s even some guy from New Zealand on the phone who wants to talk to him.

“Hi how ya doing ... I didn’t know they listened to rap down there,” he says, sounding like a younger Wolfman Jack. Well, they do. Ice-T, Ice for short, first came to attention here last year with the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper’s cops versus L.A. street gang movie “Colors.” More recently, “I’m Your Pusher,” Ice’s first single off his second LP

“Power,” has been hiphopping round the charts. The street sounds of New York and L-A- have found a j)lace in the minds and feet of a fair chunk of New Zealand’s population.

Before the interview gets into high gear — the man unsurprisingly, can talk — Ice asks us to hold on for a second: "Yo, you want any of those records you can have them,” he tells a friend who has dropped by the apartment he shares with his girlfriend Darlene (she’s the scantily-clad woman on the album and single sleeves). The cover, which has Darlene, Ice and DJ Evil E holding guns, combined, with songs like “Girls LGBNAF,” have given Ice somewhat of an ugly, sexist reputation. But it’s the ugliness of the streets of East L.A., where Ice grew up, that provides the

majority of his rhymes. More about the cover, the chauvinism, and the old neighbourhood later. Back on the phone, Ice apologises for the interruption, explaining he gets so many free records it’s time to start giving them away. Ice’s musical career started with a free record.

“I used to just rap for fun, just say rhymes for fun. I was at this place one day and this guy came and asked me to make a record — that’s in 1982 — and I made a song but I didn't get any money for it. I learned the first lesson of the music business: just because you’re making a record doesn’t mean you’re going to get paid.” Discovered rapping in a club my the makers of the movie “Breakdance” in 1982, he was offered a part.

“I really didn’t wanna

get into it, you know I was just hanging out at the time on the streets doing all kinds of crime, doing bad things. I was pushed into the film by my friends and it did pretty well. I kept making independent records and four years after that I got a record deal with Sire.”

Offered an “out” by his friends — many of whom he says are serving time or dead — by pushing him into the flick, he says that’s why he’s stayed on 'the streets with the music, as well as setting up his own Rhyme Syndicate independent rap label. “That’s why you kind of see an allegiance to the streets in my music, I never come off saying they are dumb or whatever because I was in that position myself.” So just what did he get up to in the bad ole days? “I was doing things that would get you in serious trouble. I wasn’t a drug dealer but I was doing things ... I was just lucky not to get caught. “I was just fortunate enough never to have to do a long stretch in prison or anything. “My buddy Spike is over here now and there’s nothing really I can say that would be a lie or be untrue.

“I got friends who are unfortunately still connected with crime because they haven’t yet got out and I am in no position as yet to take them in.

“When you are making records like ‘Colors’ and ‘l’m Your Pusher’ — I know kids that are still into gangs and you got to be able to make a record even they can respect. If you tell them it’s wrong you have got to come on an angle where they say, ‘Yo Ice, yeah man, I realise what, I’m doing is wrong, I got to get out of this, man.’ “I’m saying I’m not here to tell you right or wrong ... I’m trying to scare them out of it, I don’t ever want to sound like anybody’s parents. ‘I don’t want to preach. In ‘Pusher Man’ I tell them about drugs but in a way hopefully that they’ll make their own decisions.” The “Colors’ connection came after Dennis Hopper heard the song “Squeeze The Trigger” off Ice’s first album, “Rhyme Pays” (unreleased here). “He respected that song because I shot real straight and I talked about things just exactly as I thought.” Hopper asked him to look at the film, Ice asked to do the theme.

“A week later they phoned me up and they let me score some scenes to the movie and do the title song ... I just asserted myself.”

The film in turn led Ice to appear before a United States Senate committee on gangs.

“When I started doing the ‘Colors’ stuff there was really nobody who knew enough about the gangs to go and talk about them. I had been involved on the gang scene back early, when I was in high school, so I knew enough about them.

baby, if you want to get with me you have got to have a job, there ain’t nothing going on but the rent,' or ‘lf you want to get with me you have got to have a car,' people would sav I’m sexist.

“It was very simple; I just told them (the senate hearing) they know what’s going on so why are they pretending that they don’t. The .Government knows what’s going on with the gangs, the gangs in L.A. have been here for 15 years and they’ve been killing people. “It was something that has been overlooked on purpose by certain people and for them to come to me at the conference in DC and say ‘lce, what’s the problem?’

“Cause a lady can say. ‘Yo, I want to make love to you tonight.' I can't say it. I’m not any more sexis't than the average man. “If you ask a man which do you prefer, this lady in a coverall outfit or do you prefer the black mini skirt and high heels? A man will say the black mini skirt —that's sexist. "If that’s the case 1 guess I’m sexist, but I don't feel any more sexist than the average man. "It's nothing to be ashamed of or be embarrassed about; the main thing is Ice-T says it and 1 just think that's my objective; Ice-T should touch the touchy subjects." The appetite to be outspoken on everything has had Ice-T compared with the assertive black rappers Public Enemy. "Public Enemy is more into a black awareness, racial equality trip.

“You know, I turned back to them and said, ‘Y’all know what the problem is, why are you bullshitting? Why are you sitting up there acting you don’t know what the problem is? These kids aren’t bringing drugs into L.A., even though you want to put them on and make them look the enemy.’ “And it wasn’t as if I was defending the gang members but what I was saying was let’s not shuffle them off as the enemy, these kids are broke and these kids are being used as puppets for somebody else’s evil. You’ve got the gang members driving around in Mercedes Benz and all kinds of stuff but that’s nothing to what somebody actually Is making. It’s nothing. “I made more money on the streets in a weekend than I made in my entire rap career. So if that was the lure I would still be out on the streets.”

Things have got worse than even “Colors” portrayed.

“The scene in L.A. now is really super amplified ... the gangs are more like revolving around drugs and money.

"I don’t deal with the Government beyond the police department. I mean a kid never meets the CIA or the FBI, he just meets his local cop. As far as he is concerned a cop is the president because he can take his life. I keep myself very urban and very street.”

“Cos it’s now kind of like Al Capone days. We’ve got crack-cocaine instead of liquor. “I can’t go down there because it’s crazy. When I used to go down there with the gangs it was safer because if you didn’t wear the colours or dress like a gang member you ain’t no problem. Now these kids are selling crack — they’re crazy.” So to the other points of the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll unholy trinity. On the sexism charge, Ice strangely says he “raps with a female perspective.” “To understand that you have to listen to Janet Jackson’s ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately’ or the record ‘There Ain’t Nothing Going On But The Rent.’

But Ice's message has spread far beyond the L.A. smog. The overseas recognition is something he Is yet to come to grips with. He found it unnerving during his recent European trip. “It was really good, really crazy to get that far from home and people are jumping around telling you Ice-T this and saying words back to you and they don’t know how to say your record. “Rap is something just made for its own audience. It’s kind of like punk rock or speed metal.

“It’s not a form of music that you make to be loved by the masses. I write my records and I'm trying to touch a certain audience of kids who might go out and rob somebody or might get into trouble — what I would call my people, my peers, the people that are going down the same road as me.

“Now a lot of people seem to find that interesting. I was just out in Germany and places like that. It’s funny but there’s kids like that there. And when you are reaching around the world to places like Noo Zealand, they can appreciate it as hip. But it’s even more hip because I’m not trying to hit Noo Zealand.

"When women sing those records those aren’t sexist records, but if I made a record saying, ‘Yo

“I’m really writing the records for the kids across the street from me and I was just bugged out.

“It’s kind of fun when you start to realise how big music is."