By Camilla Crews
It’s exactly what’s needed to quench your thirst. It’s cool, sweet and goes down nice and easy; it’s iced tea. However, the nice and sweet is not what students received as they sat down to listen to a first generation gangster talk about his rise to fame.
The Council for University Prog-rams presented speaker Ice-T. The event on Thursday was free of charge and Blackman Auditorium was jammed packed with nearly 800 students in attendance.
Before beginning his speech, Ice-T warned the audience they would be shocked. His talk was going to be chalked full of profanity and whoever didn’t like it should be warned. He doesn’t see profanity as something offensive; rather he said, “it draws attention to a sentence.”
Currently Ice-T is one of the stars of NBC’s “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” However, he said it was a long road before he arrived at where he is today.
Ice-T lost his mother in the third grade and his father in the seventh. After becoming an orphan, he moved to his aunt’s home in California. however, he said he was unwelcome in his relative’s home. She already had children and didn’t feel like putting up with him. While on the West Coast he enrolled in Crenshaw High School, which Time Magazine deemed “Fort Crenshaw.”
While there, he reached out to gang members to gain acceptance and love, and he became a part of a gang, the Rollin 60 Crips. However, Ice-T does not condone the lifestyle. He summarizes this lifestyle as “retaliating on an enemy continually [and is] based around murder.”
After a short stint at Crenshaw High, Ice-T found out he impregnated his girlfriend and this prompted him to join the military. He was on a mission to do the right thing, he said. He gives sound advice for anyone thinking of joining the armed forces: “don’t do it.”
After leaving the Army, he came home still in the same situation he was in before he left: he was broke. So, once he discovered his friends were planning a bank robbery he wanted a part of it. Throughout this time his friends coerced him to get into rap. He befriended Afrika Islam, a DJ, who took him to record executive Seymour Stein at Sire Records — Madonna’s label.
“Even though he couldn’t understand the music, he knew it was valid,” Ice-T said.
Rapping proved to be a good move for him. His first album, “Rhyme Pays,” went gold and his follow-up, “Power,” went gold and earned him critical acclaim.
“Touching someone’s life is more important than selling a lot of albums,” he said.
Even though rapping pushed Ice-T to the forefront of rap, his rock group did more than that. The group, Body Count, pushed him in front of a political campaign. In 1992, Body Count released an album with a track on it called “Cop Killer.” This was the story of an angry African-American man who wanted revenge on cops for the beatings of Rodney King. Vice President Dan Quayle was so enraged he condemned the rapper on television. Ice-T said the Secret Service pulled his daughter out of class and questioned her about his whereabouts.
He doesn’t plan on running for office, but does have a lot to say about our political system.
He believes the Constitution is outdated.
“[The Constitution] works on behalf of who has the power,” Ice-T said. “It doesn’t mean [expletive] to us.”
He also has strong thoughts on the First Amendment.
“Freedom of speech does not exist in America,” he said. Instead he refers to the amendment as “freedom of speech, just watch what you say.”
Touching on many subjects such as feminists, racism and politics, Ice-T wanted to make sure he squandered all the rumors spread about him. He claimed he was accused of being racist and sexist.
Regarding racism he said, “I judge a devil by their deeds; I’m into human nature.”
Ice-T has made the transition many in the music industry have attempted to do, he’s gone from rapping to acting. Some of his counterparts like DMX and Ja Rule have tried to make the same leap of fate. Now, Ice-T is making a living doing so. He has been on “Law ‘ Order” for five years. Initially, he was apprehensive. He said he didn’t want to work 14-hour days and discouraged the writers from giving him a lot of lines because he was going to get paid the same amount whether or not he had a lot of dialogue. Some may call this transition “selling out” but Ice-T disagrees.
“Selling out is when you go against your integrity or what you believe in, not when you’re trying to feed your family.”
Another surprise may be he is playing the role of a cop, considering his past relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department. What does this say about him?
“I’m a good actor,” he said.
At the end of the speech, two microphones were set-up for the audience to ask questions. The first student came bouncing down the aisle asking Ice-T if he wanted the honor of being the first person to sign a redheaded rapper. Ice-T shot him down, saying his business approach was not up to par. After about 20 minutes of a question and answer session the event was over and students rose to their feet to give Ice-T a standing ovation.
“It was more than I expected. I wouldn’t expect that kind of speech at NU,” said Shaquille Al-Hijaz, a sophomore linguistics major.
Other students appreciated his honesty and up-front approach.
“He was saying what he wanted,” said Zack Bennardo, a freshman business major.
CUP was satisfied with the student reaction.
“I didn’t think we were going to have as good of a turnout as we did. I’m very pleased to see that reaction,” said Ryan Stanton, lecture chair for CUP.
