Ice-T

Biography

Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known as Ice T, is an American rapper and actor.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey and started out with other West Coast rap pioneers such as Kid Frost and Egyptian Lover with

Electro recordings. Later on, he changed his style and was the first rapper from the west that got accepted by the East Coast. His early producers include the Unknown DJ and especially Afrika Islam, the man behind the beats on 1987s Rhyme Pays, 1988s Power and 1989s The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just watch what you say.

As the title of this third album suggests, Ice T was from the start not only a gangster rapper - he was one of the driving forces behind the new style - but also a political rapper. Seymour Stein called him "the Bob Dylan of rap", and this may be to the point. On "Freedom of Speech" Ice T attacked Tipper Gore for introducing the Parental Advisory sticker. In 1991, Ice's fourth album, Original Gangster, came out; including raps about child abuse and drunk driving as well as the theme song from the movie New Jack City by Mario van Peebles, the movie that re-launched Ice's career as an actor. Ice also got to be the lead singer/shouter of his metal band Body Count and made a song called "Cop Killer" in 1992, eventually causing Warner Brothers to drop Ice. Virgin Records released his next album Home Invasion (1993), an album with many political raps as well as featuring a new female rapper named Grip and Ice's DJ Evil E as a rapper. On VI - Return of the Real, Ice returned to his gangster rap roots. His 7th Deadly Sin (1999), one of the first records to be distributed via mp3 before appearing in record stores, continued in this vein. In both cases, the music was updated while not breaking any new ground. In the year 2000, Ice teamed up with East Coast pioneer Kool Keith from the Ultramagnetic MCs to form the Analog Brothers - a very successful (at least artistically) experiment. The same year also brought Ice-T's Greatest Hits: The Evidence.

Ice-T is also a successful actor. He plays Detective Odafin 'Fin' Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Gamertag

Ice is a big fan of the Call of Duty franchise and his gamertag on the Xbox LIVE network is LORD 187x.

Reviews

Ice-T is known to give quick reviews of games on twitter. This was brought to more people's eyes during the live Giant Bombcast at PAX 2010. He often uses words like SUPAGANSTA and SUPADOPE to describe the games he loves.

FLTG 'Kane & Lynch 2" Instant review: I've only played the game for two hours so far. 2 Words > Super Gangsta!
via Twitter

Giant Bombcast

As of September 15, 2010, the general consensus is that Ice-T is going to appear on an episode of the Giant Bombcast sometime in the future. This is evident by numerous tweets between Ryan Davis and Ice-T himself discussing the possibility, Ice-T saying he'd be down with it, and Ryan having a telephone conversation with Ice-T in the office regarding the possibility.

As of December 9, 2012, this still has not happened.

Thoughts On Games

Ice-T often provides his thoughts on video games. On September 27, 2010 he did a live stream and answered some game questions from the viewers.

On Playstation Move:

Ice-T is not interested in Playstation Move because he does not want to wave his arms around and have to stand up while playing his games.

On the Console Wars

"Who the fuck cares?"

On the Giant Bombcast

Ice-T claims that since he and Giant Bomb are interested in games he could appear on the Bombcast. It needs some time to be arranged though because he is "stuck" in New York while Giant Bomb is over in "Cali".

Game Informer Interview

Ice-T was interviewed in the March 2011 issue of Game Informer. In it, he talks about his Call of Duty clan SMG ("Sex, Money, and Guns") and his past experiences with games. He also revealed that he often tells his wife Coco to fetch him the cheat book when he's stuck in a certain game.