Quotes By Ice T

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.

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.

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.

I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.

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

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.

AIDS is such a scary thing and it's also the kind of thing that you think won't happen to you. It can happen to you and it's deadly serious.

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

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

I have to grow with my audience.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's just that when you heard hip-hop, no matter where you were, it was a culture that kind of made you want to try to be part of it. Whether you thought you were an artist, whether you thought you could be a DJ, whether you thought you could breakdance, or whether you thought you could rap. It was the kind of culture that had a lot of open doors.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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