Ice T Quotes

I’m in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.

Every once in a while, I hear somebody call me Tracy to try to let me know that they know me, you know, personally. But most of my real friends will call me Trey, or ‘Ice’ was basically short for Iceberg. So they would call me – some of my boys call me Berg.

I’m on the front line and I am a rapper.

If it sells, it sells. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll go make a movie.

I’m a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.

I think everybody wants to redeem themselves after they’ve done something that might be considered negative. I don’t think anyone wants to go to the grave negative.

I have to grow with my audience.

One of the things about powerful people is they have the ability to make it look easy.

I started rapping before anybody had ever bought a car from it. It was truly about the art form and the culture, more so than now, where it’s a successful way to make money. Back then you had to be doing it because you liked it.

No, I’ll stay Ice-T. This is what got me here, I’m always going to stay true to that. If it weren’t for hip-hop I wouldn’t be doing all these other things.

You have to come in on a professional level to make it, otherwise you just can’t get into rap.

Diet food is for lazy people.

The best way to listen to the album is to put it on, get some Moet, lay back with your boys, and kick it.

‘New Jack City’ was a perfect marriage of music and film. They used a lot of musicians: myself, Christopher Williams. People that were popular because of their music were given the chance to act. And the soundtrack was incredible.

Ice-T in the music has done some outrageous things.

I’m competitive in that I would like to outsell my last record.

The right to bear arms is because it’s the last form of defense against tyranny.

As long as I’m around the cats in the hip hop scene, they’ll throw me a track and I’ll write a rap over it.

I make an effort to keep it as real as I possibly can.

…As an artist, you need the naysayers and the nonbelievers to add fuel to your creative fire.

You can’t get what you want all the time in life.

I’ve evolved, but I’m the same dude, I’m just in a different place. We all change, we all grow. I shouldn’t be in the same place that I was 30 years ago; I should be more intelligent, you know.

When you hit the wall, it’s how fast you come back.

Ultimately I am happy that everybody is embracing hip hop and the sounds from the streets.

I don’t feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don’t think it is difficult.

I mean rappin’ to me is easy, it’s something you can do over a week.

Redemption just means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong.

When you start a business, go for the lowest hanging fruit.

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they’re scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don’t know if you’ve seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it’s like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.

Because I first made my name as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume I’m strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey.

As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That’s why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.

A lot of people play single to work some angle. I’m always about keeping it real. If that’s how I’m living, that’s how I’m living.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

My father’s family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn’t a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude.

The music led to the acting. But movies aren’t something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.

So from an actor’s perspective, you really have no idea how you’re acting.

When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.

Everything we do helps the new artists in the long run.

I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You’ve got to harden the metal.

I think the most successful are the most paranoid. The first thing people do when they buy a mansion is they build the biggest wall you could possibly build around it. What happens is, now you become a target. If I go into the hood, I’m at a disadvantage. They could carry guns. I can’t. They can hit me in the face. I can’t.

I couldn’t possibly have lived all the things that Ice-T on the records lived.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it’s about.

I think L.A. radio is learning from the Bay. The Bay is a very classic place. Mac Mall, C-Bo, all that stuff, they love their artists, they’re old school up there. My first big concert was playing in the Bay; I played the Fillmore.

If I do a song where I’m angry, when it’s time to perform it live I’m not mad, I’m happy. I’m at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That’s acting.

Oh man, nobody is as tough as Mr T. Ice T is pretty tough though as well.

I don’t have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.

Jay-Z is like a rap-savant, he doesn’t have to write the rhymes down, he can create complex raps in his head. I mean he does memorize it, he just doesn’t write it down on paper. He doesn’t freestyle onto the track, it’s all thought out.

We have groups that do that, but I can’t rap with the mentality of an 18 year old when I’m in my 30’s.

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.

Real men hold themselves accountable for stuff.

So you don’t have to take us too seriously; I mean, we’re already intimidating enough on stage.

Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls.

I think singing and acting go hand in hand. Take an R&B singer: one song says, ‘I love you,’ the next is, ‘Baby, don’t leave me’, the next is, ‘If you leave me I don’t care.’ You have to drop in and out of different perspectives.

I don’t watch daytime television, I have a job, I work and, you know, I think daytime television is really for women.

That’s one of the first things that comes out of young people’s mouths when they’re in love. FOREVER. And that’s cool, it’s all good-until you get old enough to realize what forever is.

Any New York group can come to L.A. and sell out every show, but an L.A. group who goes to New York might not do the same because the audience hasn’t been introduced to the group.

If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.

If you’re really a rapper, you can’t stop rapping.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it’s what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street.

You can’t come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that’s connected to the system.