Quotes By Ice T

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I've never read for a movie, I've always been given them.

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

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

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

I have to grow with my audience.

My mother passed when I was in the third grade, my father when I was in the seventh, and that's when I was shipped to Los Angeles to live with an aunt.

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

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.

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

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

I'll never sell 14 million like Hammer, I just wanna do a good Ice-T show.

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

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.

A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.

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

You have the core hip-hop, which would just be beats and breaks, more something like what you hear with DJ Premier. Then you get into the more highly produced hip-hop, which is something like what DJ Khaled does. But at some point, it starts to get kind of pop.

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.