Top 45 Ice T Quotes

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

‘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.

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.

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.

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

Most interviewers are looking for a headline. They’re not skilled. They’re looking for shock value.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I ain’t got no beef with east coast, I think it’s just being hyped up.

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

I’ve never been competitive with anybody but myself.

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.

When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, ‘Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.’ That’s when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting.

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

The next day, I got a phone call from him and he told me to come and read for a movie called New Jack City. So I went over there and they told me I was gonna wear dreads and play a cop.

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 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.

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

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

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

I’m just disillusioned with the hip-hop sound right now. It’s too materialistic. You know, I’m the kind of guy … I can’t do that. If you track my movement, you’ll never see a picture of me with any girl that wasn’t mine, or my own car. My jewelry, my clothes. What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?!

Well, I am very happy that I was able to play a part in bringing music from the streets onto the radio and into modern culture, I worked very hard and always believed in the sounds I was creating.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

My name, my real name, is Tracy. I always thought I was like a boy named Sue. So I made my friends call me ‘Tray.’

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.