Ice-T Quotes

#1. I like crime movies where the crime is so incredible that, attractive as it seems, you don't wanna do it because it's just too dangerous.

Ice-T

#2. It's not about being mad at everything. It's about being really mad at the right things.

Ice-T

#3. I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

Ice-T

#4. 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.

Ice-T

#5. You've got the Wall Street situation, the sub-prime situation. You've got a black president. We've got wars. We've got unemployment. But the music doesn't reflect that. And I challenge anybody to show me a music that's on the radio that reflects that.

Ice-T

#6. I've lectured at Stanford, Princeton & Harvard to name a few ... I just might be smarter than YOU

Ice-T

#7. If one person comes in and says, this is the way life should be, I think you're asking for chaos. I think you gotta let different people live different ways. It's a big world.

Ice-T

#8. Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out.

Ice-T

#9. Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, "My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you."

Ice-T

#10. A lot of times people would offer me movies and, because I'm a car freak, I'd look in a magazine and say, 'How much is this car? If you give me this car I'll show up and do the movie' I call 'em 'sports car flicks'.

Ice-T

#11. I'm normal. I just had a different occupation for a while, and when you're in a different occupation, you have to carry yourself a different way. Most of my art is me bringing you stories from that era of my life. My life now is kind of boring.

Ice-T

#12. I was a pretty bad person early in my life.

Ice-T

#13. I think that men need to have a little bit of manism. You have feminism. I don't have a problem with that.

Ice-T

#14. Most interviewers are looking for a headline. They're not skilled. They're looking for shock value.

Ice-T

#15. I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they're told to do.

Ice-T

#16. I think when people say 'real hip-hop,' they want it more buried in the streets. They want it more connected to the streets and the grime and the roughness of the streets. They don't want the fluff.

Ice-T

#17. I don't rhyme about guns I ain't shot
Hoes I ain't caught
Or shit I ain't bought.

Ice-T

#18. I'm a far cry from politically correct, because I don't really care what the political views are. I don't care what the people say. I'll say my opinion. That will always make you controversial.

Ice-T

#19. 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.

Ice-T

#20. The rock'n'roll lifestyle really is available to anybody that's got money. Honestly. Once you get money, if you interview a hundred people with money, they'll all sound like rock stars.

Ice-T

#21. That became the signature Ice-T style - rhymes that were "topical" and "vividly optical." To me it was street-level journalism, real-life observations told in poetry. That's the vision I tried to bring to all my recordings.

Ice-T

#22. Rapping is a vocal delivery, so you can do it without being part of hip-hop and not knowing what hip-hop is about.

Ice-T

#23. I've been in crime for a long time and I know that the actual move isn't the actual crime: the crime continues [afterwards].

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#25. I'm not going to allow anybody to hold a badge up over me or a cross or any other power symbol and say I'm going to kill you and you're just going to kneel down to me because I'm the law.

Ice-T

#26. When I was in the 12th grade, I got my girlfriend pregnant. I just got out of school, she was a 10th-grader. I'm a teen parent, and I'm at a point where I'm like, 'Man I've got to do something.'

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#28. When I got a chance to rap, I just busted my ass. When I got a chance to act, I busted my ass. Anytime I get a chance. I'm not wasting time. I won't do it if I'm not doing it 110 percent. You've got to work hard if you want to play hard. I like to play, but I know I gotta bust my ass.

Ice-T

#29. I think, people look at me, and they say, 'You were very aggressive,' I say, 'Yeah,' you know, and I've made a better life for myself, for my son, so I should reflect that with my music now. I shouldn't still be rhyming like that; that would be me lying.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#32. You could be a Green Beret and a kid could jump out from behind a building and hit you with a rock. No matter how tough you become in the military, there's a way to die: there's nothing safe about it.

Ice-T

#33. I'm very much against the anonymity of bloggers and social media. I just hate it and I think it's really cowardly.

Ice-T

#34. 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.

Ice-T

#35. 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.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#37. 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.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#39. 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.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#41. 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.

Ice-T

#42. I have to grow with my audience.

Ice-T

#43. There's a point where a cop pulls you out of that car and starts abusing you or beating on you and at that moment he is no longer within the law.

Ice-T

#44. Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#46. 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.

Ice-T

#47. Military is a great place for a jock. That's the first thing they test you, they test you physically. If you can run, if you can do the pushups, it's not as hard a transition. If you can't do that, you're going to have a problem because they're going to really work it out of you or work it into you.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#49. My father died early. My mother died early. I started hanging with the gangs. I'm on the streets; I'm committing crimes. And the music came along, and this music just took me on a different road.

Ice-T

#50. If you get into crime you gotta know that everybody's a criminal and everybody's a liar, and everybody has the potential to backstab you, because it's not an honest profession. So don't go into crime and look for honesty.

Ice-T

#51. 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.

Ice-T

#52. I've never been a cop hater. You know, when I was breaking the law, the cops were the opponent. I just thought I could outsmart them.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#54. 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.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#56. Yeah, it's legal in the United States. It's part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police.

Ice-T

#57. Winners have to absorb losses.

Ice-T

#58. If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.

Ice-T

#59. I just don't believe that there's any way that you're ever gonna get one peace, because everybody has different ways of seeing life.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#61. An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.

Ice-T

#62. I'm a big Brad Pitt fan. He's really talented. I think a lot of men are intimidated by him, saying he's just a pretty boy or whatever, but he is a bad man. I think he can act.

Ice-T

#63. I write rhymes with addition and algebra, mental geometry.

Ice-T

#64. With the invention of the blog and all this Internet stuff, everybody has an opinion; everybody has a voice. In fact, there was a time when the average person didn't have a voice so you had to pick an artist to speak for you.

Ice-T

#65. Diet food is for lazy people.

Ice-T

#66. I look at my career and I feel I have the potential to maybe mature into a Samuel Jackson-type older cat, and people will still respect me and say 'Yo, Ice-T was wild', into my old age. And why not? I don't necessarily think I'll be rapping in 10 years.

Ice-T

#67. Dealing with the old school rappers, you see a lot of humility. When you're new, nothing is wrong. Everything is tight. Because you're trying to hype the world into believing in you.

Ice-T

#68. I'd say people are victims of circumstances and they're limited to the opportunities that they see. Even though there might be more opportunities, you might not see them. You might just think, "I don't have any options." You usually go to the dark side, in that situation.

Ice-T

#69. I have to take what I say and make it heavy, so every single bar means something. And there's no riddles in my rhymes. Every single word means something.

Ice-T

#70. Being in the military just lets you know how helpless you are. You could train forever but you're still at the mercy of someone in the Pentagon, or somebody in the rear moving you around like a chess piece.

Ice-T

#71. 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.

Ice-T

#72. What I'm trying to tell people is that police brutality in the 'hood is nothing new. And the thing is that whether this guy, the cop killer in my song, is real or not, believe it, there are people at that point.

Ice-T

#73. If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it.

Ice-T

#74. Never mumble some sarcastic shit to somebody who can obviously fuck you up.

Ice-T

#75. There's a lot of films I've done I don't ever wanna see again.

Ice-T

#76. I've got a phone,
answer machine, TV set,
computer, hand grenade
- everything you need
to run a business in
Los Angeles.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#78. If I'm going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.

Ice-T

#79. I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio.

Ice-T

#80. Frankly, I don't feel the fire anymore from the youth. I miss my era when motherfuckers were fighting for shit, spitting fire in their lyrics.

Ice-T

#81. 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.

Ice-T

#82. 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.

Ice-T

#83. Being cool is when you win, you don't get too happy; and when you lose, you don't get too mad.

Ice-T

#84. 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.

Ice-T

#85. If you really listen to my music my music is more like stories than party records. I never made party records.

Ice-T

#86. Once I get something going well, I'll risk fucking it up just for the action.

Ice-T

#87. When I recorded my first album, my ego didn't let me believe that what I was gonna say on the mic, anyone would really care about. But then when I found out that they did, I started to take it more seriously.

Ice-T

#88. Truthfully, a weak rapper can hide behind a lot of production.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#90. I'm afraid because some police are way out of control. My true feeling with police is this: If they do their job, there's no problem.

Ice-T

#91. Anybody who speeds thinks they can outsmart the cops.

Ice-T

#92. When we say a rapper, a rapper can say a rhyme. But an MC can rock a party.

Ice-T

#93. It's like they want to shut rappers down. They want to silence us. The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer.

Ice-T

#94. 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.

Ice-T

#95. There is no such thing as a normal family so don't trip off it, just deal with it.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T

#97. Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.

Ice-T

#98. I've never been competitive with anybody but myself.

Ice-T

#99. The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.

Ice-T

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

Ice-T