Ice-T’s advice to musicians who want to say something controversial? Stand by what you really mean and lawyer up.
Ahead of his heavy metal band Body Count’s forthcoming album Merciless, the 66-year-old rapper answered fan-submitted questions from The Guardian. One person asked about the band’s 1992 protest song “Cop Killer” and if he felt the “heat” and regretted releasing it.
“I never really questioned myself, but the heat came when they started sending bomb threats to Warner Bros. I threw the rock, that’s my heat,” Ice-T explained. “But when other people could get hurt, that’s nerve-racking.”
“But I got news for people: Anybody that thinks controversy is a way to make money, it’s not. You get a lot of buzz, but now you need lawyers,” he continued. “So don’t just say something stupid and then back-pedal — if you’re going to say something, stand on it.”
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Upon the song’s release, The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) called for a boycott of Time Warner’s products, which police organizations followed across the country.
Former National Association of Chiefs of Police president Dennis R. Martin claimed at the time that the song stoked “inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country” and was partially responsible for two officer shootings.
Ice-T defended creating the song, telling Associated Press, “At no point do I go out and say, ‘Let’s do it.’ I’m singing in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality. I ain’t never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times. But I never did it.”
Warner Bros. executives and shareholders began receiving death threats, ultimately leading to Ice-T, born Tracy Morrow, to announce he would be pulling the song from all subsequent copies of Body Count’s self-titled debut.
“When people go after the company, that’s a real punk move,” Ice-T said in a 1992 press conference announcing the song’s removal per the Washington Post. “They’re afraid to go after me. This is my fight — and Sister Souljah’s fight, Ice Cube’s fight.”
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Ice-T made reporters watch a 40-minute civil rights documentary before announcing the “Cop Killer” decision.
“I don’t understand why I’m supposed to like the police,” he said after the documentary finished. “None of my leaders liked them. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. They’ve never been a friend of black people. As for the ones that are handling the job correctly, I have all the respect in the world for them. As for the brutal ones, I’d rather get rid of them before they get rid of me.”
The rapper and actor has played NYPD detective Odafin Tutuola on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit since 2000. Recently, an X user asked Ice if the show is “normal” again after going “woke.”
The “Colors” rapper shut him down immediately, asking him “What the F is woke? Lol. Like I give a f—.”
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