Tracy Lauren Marrow was born on the 16th of February 1958 in Newark, New Jersey, into a family where his father Solomon worked as a conveyor belt mechanic and his mother Alice was a fair-skinned Black woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lena Horne. His early life was marked by the sudden loss of both parents; his mother died of a heart attack when he was in third grade, and his father followed suit when Tracy was just 13 years old. Orphaned and sent to live with relatives in the upper-middle-class Black neighborhood of View Park-Windsor Hills in Los Angeles, the young Marrow found himself in a bedroom shared with his cousin Earl, a rock music enthusiast whose local radio station sparked Tracy's lifelong obsession with heavy metal. This dual exposure to the harsh realities of gang life in South Central Los Angeles and the rebellious energy of rock music would eventually forge the unique persona of Ice-T, a figure who could navigate the streets of Crenshaw High School and the stages of Lollapalooza with equal ease. The first time race played a major role in his life was at age seven, when he realized his lighter skin had protected him from the racism his white friends directed at Black children, a lesson his mother summed up simply by telling him that people are stupid and that he must control how their negativity affected him.
From The Army To The Streets
After his father's death, Marrow moved to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles and attended Crenshaw High School, where gangs like the Crips and Bloods fought in the hallways. Although he never officially joined a gang, he was affiliated with the Crips and began reading the novels of Iceberg Slim, memorizing them and reciting them to friends who told him to kick some more of that by Ice, T, giving him his nickname. In 1975, at the age of 17, he began receiving Social Security benefits from his father's death and used the money to rent an apartment for $90 a month, but the money was not enough to support his pregnant girlfriend. He enlisted in the United States Army in October 1977, serving in the 25th Infantry Division and later being stationed in Hawaii where he met a pimp named Mac who taught him how to be a pimp himself. While in the Army, he was involved in a group of soldiers charged with the theft of a rug, and after receiving a $2,500 bonus check, he went absent without leave for a month before returning. He was discharged as a Private First Class in December 1979 after serving for two years and two months, taking advantage of an early honorable discharge because he was a single father. After leaving the Army, he claimed to have begun a career as a bank robber, conducting take-over bank robberies like in the film Heat, and stated he was glad the United States justice system has statutes of limitations which had likely expired when he admitted to his involvement in multiple Class 1 Felonies in the early-to-mid 1980s.
Ice-T's music career began in 1982 when he met producer Willie Strong from Saturn Records, and in 1983, Strong recorded his first single, Cold Wind Madness, also known as The Coldest Rap, an electro hip-hop record that became an underground success despite radio stations not playing it due to explicit lyrics about taking a woman to the Snooty Fox motel in Los Angeles. That same year, he released Body Rock, another electro hip-hop single that found popularity in clubs, and in 1984, he was a featured rapper on Reckless, a single by DJ Chris The Glove Taylor and co-producer David Storrs that gained widespread popularity as a featured track via the motion picture Breakin and its soundtrack album. Ice-T decided to adopt Schoolly D's style and wrote the lyrics to his first gangsta rap song, 6 in the Mornin, in his Hollywood apartment, creating a minimal beat with a Roland TR-808 that was unusually violent by the standards of hip-hop at the time. He intentionally did not represent any particular gang, wearing a mixture of red and blue clothing and shoes to avoid antagonizing gang-affiliated listeners who debated his true affiliation. In 1987, he landed a deal with a major label Sire Records, and when label founder and president Seymour Stein heard his demo, he said Ice-T sounded like Bob Dylan. He released his debut album Rhyme Pays, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, and recorded the title theme song for Dennis Hopper's Colors, a film about inner-city gang life in Los Angeles.
The Cop Killer Controversy
In 1991, Ice-T released his album O.G. Original Gangster, on which he introduced his heavy metal band Body Count in a track of the same name, and the band released its self-titled debut album in March 1992. The band's song Cop Killer, a rock song intended to speak from the viewpoint of a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops, infuriated government officials, the National Rifle Association of America, and various police advocacy groups. Time Warner Music refused to release Ice-T's upcoming album Home Invasion because of the controversy surrounding Cop Killer, and Ice-T suggested that the furor over the song was an overreaction, noting that movies about nurse killers and teacher killers were acceptable while a black man writing a record about a cop killer was not. He split amicably with Sire/Warner Bros. Records after a dispute over the artwork of the album Home Invasion and reactivated Rhyme Syndicate to form a deal with Priority Records for distribution. Priority released Home Invasion in the spring of 1993, which peaked at No. 9 on Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and at No. 14 on the Billboard 200, spawning several singles including Gotta Lotta Love, I Ain't New Ta This, and 99 Problems, which would later inspire Jay-Z to record a version with new lyrics in 2003. When he decided to withdraw the song from his album, he replaced it with a metal version of his rap Freedom of Speech, and the song was condemned by both George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle during the 1992 United States presidential election.
The Longest Running Male Actor
Ice-T's acting career began with small parts in the films Breakin in 1984 and its sequels, Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and Rappin in 1984 and 1985 respectively, before his major role debut, starring as police detective Scotty Appleton in New Jack City in 1991. He received top billing for his role in Surviving the Game in 1994 and continued to appear in small roles in TV series and other films throughout the 1990s, including a recurring role as vengeful drug dealer Danny Cort on the television series New York Undercover, for which he earned the 1996 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In 1997, he co-created the short-lived series Players, produced by Dick Wolf, and this collaboration led Wolf to add Ice-T to the cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Since 2000, he has portrayed Odafin Fin Tutuola, a former undercover narcotics officer transferred to the Special Victims Unit, making him the longest-running male series actor in American TV history, according to Deadline. He has also hosted reality television shows such as Ice Loves Coco, which ran for three seasons from 2011 to 2013, and the true crime documentary In Ice Cold Blood on the Oxygen cable channel, which ran for three seasons starting in 2018. His voice acting roles include Madd Dogg in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Agent Cain in Sanity: Aiken's Artifact, and he has appeared in numerous films and television series, including a 2016 advertisement for GEICO where he yells back No, it's lemonade when people ask if it is Ice-T.
A Life Of Discipline And Activism
Ice-T has stated on numerous occasions that he is a teetotaler and lives a straight edge lifestyle, and he is a long-time practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and boxing, and is a big fan of the UFC. He married swimsuit model Coco Austin in January 2002, and in celebration of their impending ninth wedding anniversary, the couple renewed their wedding vows on the 4th of June 2011. As of 2006, they owned a penthouse apartment in North Bergen, New Jersey, and in 2012, they were building a five-bedroom house in Edgewater, New Jersey. Ice-T has been an activist throughout his career, collaborating with fellow vocalist and anti-censorship campaigner Jello Biafra on his album The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say, and he and Biafra appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1990 to debate Tipper Gore on censorship in music. After the controversy of the Body Count song Cop Killer, Ice-T became an icon for free-speech campaigners, which led to a doubling in album sales, and he has toured universities lecturing on first amendment rights and civil liberties. He has been vocal about the billions wasted on the Iraq war and insists he'd never get involved in politics, but in 2017, he signed a petition to Congress for criminal-justice reform. His 1994 book, The Ice Opinion, was largely focused on his view on politics, and writing in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, he was one of the only rappers who criticized the targeting of Koreans by some Black rioters.