He probably said, ‘Rob ‘em, don’t hurt ‘em.’ But that doesn’t matter. We came to find out I was set up by a guy I thought was my friend. They started wiping the door handles off and I’m like, ‘Oh man, this is about to go down.’ Then something told them to leave and they broke out.

They had myself, Evil E, Sean E Sean, my buddy Rich, my daughter and her friend in the office. We were lined up and I thought we were going to get executed.” people are like, ‘Oh, I got shot!’ I was embarrassed! The most recent one was when I was robbed in Los Angeles. I was shot back before it was popular to say you got shot. “Oh, I came close to death quite a few times: I’ve been in gunfights, I was in a robbery, and I got shot a couple of times – I’ve been through a lot. What’s the closest you’ve ever come to death? You’ve written some uncompromisingly brutal songs about street life. Now aged 63, the rapper – who has worked with the likes of Slayer, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth and Black Sabbath – shows no sign of slowing his mouth. Meanwhile, Black Hoodie echoed the authority-baiting controversy first stirred up by Body Count’s 1992 hit Cop Killer. Fuck awards! ‘Oh, I got nominated for one? Shit. Their 2017 single Black Hoodie was nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Metal Performance category. His rap-thrash metal hybrid outfit Body Count have now spent over 30 noise-filled years together, but they're not on a nostalgia trip. “Dr Dre, Tupac… I guess it’s a rite of passage. “Think about it: every rapper who’s ever acted has played a cop,” he says, laughing.

In a career spanning 30 years, Ice-T made a sideways move into acting, appearing in several Hollywood movies including New Jack City (1991) and Tank Girl (1995), before landing a full-time role as NYPD detective Odafin Tutuola in crime thriller series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. “They say, ‘If you live long enough, life will teach you how to live.’ But getting out of your 20s is rough.” “I look back on my 20s and think, ‘Man, I was fucking insane,’” he laughs, chatting to Kerrang! in his home in New Jersey. This creative lane swerve changed, and probably saved his life. Dope, guns and life in the streets have long played lyrical inspiration to gangsta rapper, actor, author, label chief and Body Count frontman, Ice-T.Īs a kid, the artist also known as Tracy Marrow grew up in bloody murder hotspot South Central Los Angeles, where he dodged death and long-term incarceration by translating his life experiences into the heavy rap cuts on breakout albums Rhyme Pays (1987), Power (1988) and The Iceberg/Freedom Of Speech… Just Watch What You Say (1989).

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