Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood

In this intriguing memoir, groundbreaking rapper and actor Ice-T chronicles his rise from nomadic criminal to hip-hop star. After losing both parents by the age of 12, Tracy Marrow was shipped to relatives in Los Angeles where he navigated the growing gang culture of the city and became a father at 18. A four-year tour in the army was followed by a lucrative interlude robbing jewelry and clothing stores. As his fellow thieves began to file off to prison, Ice-T turned to t

In this intriguing memoir, groundbreaking rapper and actor Ice-T chronicles his rise from nomadic criminal to hip-hop star. After losing both parents by the age of 12, Tracy Marrow was shipped to relatives in Los Angeles where he navigated the growing gang culture of the city and became a father at 18. A four-year tour in the army was followed by a lucrative interlude robbing jewelry and clothing stores. As his fellow thieves began to file off to prison, Ice-T turned to the nascent rap scene and scored immediate success. Continuing to reinvent himself, Ice-T went on to front a rock band and also was one of the first rap figures to work in film and television. ThereTMs little focus on the music itself, but rather on his careers and his observations on the various subcultures he passes through. What lifts the book above the general run of entertainer memoirs is the quality of these observations—Ice-T is a canny businessman, and he charts clearly the decisions that brought him up each step of a very treacherous ladder. (Mar.)
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Starred Review Famous first as a rapper, and then as an actor in numerous movies and as a regular on Law & Order: SVU, Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow in New Jersey, then moved to Los Angeles when both of his parents died prematurely of heart attacks. Raised by inattentive relatives, he became embroiled in gang life. After four years in the army, he found himself on the street and back in the criminal world. He had been writing his own rhymes since high school, then released several groundbreaking West Coast rap recordings and became lead vocalist for the influential thrash-metal band Body Count, which, in 1992, released its notorious single, Cop Killer. The subsequent controversy led to Ice-T�s first experience with censorship and even a dressing-down from the Bush-Quayle administration. In this no-holds-barred memoir, Ice-T writes with refreshing, if profane, down-to-earth candor, recalling his first memories of racism, his increasingly dangerous street life, and his experiences on tour, including a funny and wild anecdote about a show in Milan. A fascinating and inspiring story about an African American orphan who beat the odds to become successful, this memoir will appeal to fans of hip-hop and popular culture. --June Sawyers

MY FATHER, who was a church-going, nine-to-five guy—did his best to raise me on his own after my mother died. My aunt who lived right behind us helped to raise me, too. My father also had a housekeeper named Miss Sanoni—she was from the Deep South—and she would come over every day and cook these Southern dishes for dinner. So they all chipped in to raise me. Well, raise me? That’s ki

MY FATHER, who was a church-going, nine-to-five guy—did his best to raise me on his own after my mother died. My aunt who lived right behind us helped to raise me, too. My father also had a housekeeper named Miss Sanoni—she was from the Deep South—and she would come over every day and cook these Southern dishes for dinner. So they all chipped in to raise me. Well, raise me? That’s kind of a stretch. Wasn’t too much raising going on. Just like my mother, my father wasn’t much of a talker. He was more of a supporter. The bills were paid. I ate. Nurturing? Naw. That wasn’t my pops’ style. Nobody in my immediate circle talked to me much. Nobody asked about how I was feeling. That’s the main reason that, these days, I talk to my kids a lot. I talk to my wife a lot. But in my house as a kid, there was just not a lot of conversation. My parents and my aunts weren’t made in that let’s-talk-it-out mold.

From the minute we woke up, we were constantly scheming to rob someplace. Pulling licks. We’d stand around, playfully taunting each other. “What? You scared of money? Nigga, you scared of money?” That one phrase sent more people to prison in my neighborhood than anything else.

But now that I’ve transformed, Tesha’s starting to look for guys that are more like the new me rather than the old me. When she was growing up, I was hustling. That’s who I was. I was doing dirt every day. She went after those criminal-minded guys. Now that I’m on TV—who the fuck knows? Maybe she’ll go after an actor.

Here’s one real jewel from the game. Pimps and hoes don’t fall in love, they make love. I like to use the strip club example because most men won’t cop to having been with a hooker, but they will admit they’ve been to the strip club. When you’re in the club, that girl giving you lap dances, looking into your eyes, doesn’t love you. She’s making love to you. Your dumb ass thinks she loves you and you give her all your money. Sorry. She doesn’t give a shit about you, dog. The big bosses at NBC don’t love me; they make love to me. They act like they love me because my fucking show is making money. I’m putting millions of dollars into their bank account. I’m a top-shelf ho, but I’m still a ho.

In retrospect, I understand: Dude is a child. As a child you don’t really have guidance. Maybe he doesn’t know about the ground-breaking artists who laid the foundation for him. Maybe he doesn’t know enough to pay homage to those men. Or maybe he isn’t capable of making better music. I mean, it’s not his intent to destroy hip-hop. Soulja Boy doesn’t know me from a can of paint. Good luck with his career. Good luck to everything he’s trying to do.

I was deep enough in the life to understand one crucial thing about the gang life: The flip side of the violence and negativity is the love. And that’s some extreme love. Extreme love. I only realized this recently: When I got to Crenshaw High, that’s the first time I’d ever heard someone say love to me. My aunt never said she loved me. My mother and father were never big on that word. You get to Crenshaw, and you got a male friend saying, “Cuz, ain’t nothin’ never fin’ to happen to you, homey. You safe, cuz. I love you.” That’s some heavy shit. Like a lot of the homeys, I was getting something I wished I’d gotten from my father. When I was a little kid and something happened to me, I didn’t want my dad to call the police. Fuck that. I wanted to say, “Go get ’em, Dad!” Of course, hardly anybody has it like that in real life, but every little kid wants to believe that his pops is Superman. And that protection you get from the gang is something most people in the ’hood don’t get from their families. To me, it’s interesting that some of the kids who came from big families, families with four or five brothers, didn’t need to join the gangs. Because they had that unconditional protection. “Yo, don’t fuck with me—I got a couple of brothers that will come see you, nigga.” I didn’t have that big family structure. And like everybody else, I wanted that feeling that someone had my back. Yes, the first I really heard love expressed was with the Crips. Not only heard the word “love,” but saw it firsthand. Saw it manifested. Saw that if you fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us. That’s very enticing. That’s very attractive to a young brother. It’s human nature. We’ve always had armies and tribes, teams and squads. That sense of loyalty, brotherhood, love—it’s very primal, it’s at the core of what it means to be a human. And it’s authentic love—as real and as deeply felt as any love out there—but it’s just misdirected in gangs.

There’s something civilians often don’t realize about the military. You’re really only trained to do two things: Kill people and take over shit. You’re not coming home with too many other useful skills, unless you plan on becoming a police officer. Today, we’ve got young vets touching down from Iraq and Afghanistan who’ve killed a shitload of people, and if they’re not properly reprogrammed to come back into society, it’s not like that “kill switch” is an easy thing to turn off...

We snatched all the furs and disappeared into the catacombs, moving too fast for any pursuit. We got outside and were laughing because we’d got away so easily. As I looked at the mountain of mink and fox coats, I was already doing the mental calculations and figured they were worth maybe $50,000. We could sell them that same night for about $10,000. We started loading and stuffing all the minks into the trunk, backseat, and front seat and got into our car. We couldn’t see out the windows because the mink was piled all the way up. The driver had to clear a little rectangular space so he could see where he was going. When we pulled away in the car, people kept staring at us and laughing, because we looked like a fucking furball driving down the street.

Now, looking back on it, this is what I learned: Yes, you have the right to say whatever you want in America, but you have to be prepared for the ramifications of what you say. When I yelled “Cop Killer,” I did not prepare for the fallout. I’d been dissing rappers for years; they didn’t do shit. Then I dissed the cops—and they came after me like no gang I’ve ever encountered. Then Charlton Heston, Tipper Gore, and the President of the United States himself came after me.

[...]

When this shit happened, when Charlton Heston went into that shareholders meeting, thirty million dollars went into the balance. Charlton Heston, as the head of the National Rifle Association, impacted the Warner Bros. bottom line. He stood there in the meeting reading my lyrics like it was a page from the Planet of the Apes script. I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF I’M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF I’M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF … He didn’t even know what he was talking about. “These are the lyrics to ‘Killer Cop,’ ” he said. “Oops, I mean ‘Cop Killer.’ ” He’s so outraged, yet he doesn’t even know the name of the record? It was some crazy, hypocritical bullshit.