Ice-T - Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood

The Ice Opinion

Copyright 2011 by Tracy Marrow

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

O NE W ORLD is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Permission credits for photographs and song lyrics can be found beginning on .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data Ice-T (Musician)
Ice : a memoir of gangster life and redemptionfrom South Central to Hollywood / Ice-T and Douglas Century.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52330-3
1. Ice-T (Musician) 2. Rap musiciansUnited StatesBiography.
I. Century, Douglas. II. Title.
ML420.I3A3 2011
782.421649092dc22

[B] 2010041069

www.oneworldbooks.net

Jacket Photographs: Steve Vaccariello

v3.1

Special thanks to everyone whos supported me for twenty-five years and counting. My intent has always been to share and exchange game with players worldwide.

Love to all my fallen homeys, dead and locked away in prison. You are missed dearly.

Eternal love to my inner circle of friends, family, and my wife, who really know what I go through, and work to keep me focused and healthy.

Peace to all the young street hustlers, players, and gangstas. To win the game you must devise an exit strategy. We all saw the last scene in Scarface.

I CEBERG

People have to learn how to tell stories without implicating those who may not want their stories told. Some names and situations have been changed to protect those involved.

ITS HELL TO BE AN ORPHAN AT AN EARLY AGE

THIS IMPRESSIONABLE STAGE

NO LOVE BREEDS RAGE.

I MUST STAND

BECAUSE I FIRST MADE MY NAME as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume Im strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. 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. And on the street right behind usbackyard to backyardwas my aunt, my fathers sister.

For my first few years, it was just a real middle-American life.

I dont remember taking any trips or anything exciting. One thing I do remember, when my dad would take me places, he would get White Castle burgers and throw me in the backseat, and he expected me to eat my White Castles and be quiet. My dad and I spent a lot of time together not saying anything. I went to the YMCA, where I learned how to swim and do gymnastics. It was kind of a big deal to have a membership to the Y, because it meant your Pops had money to spend on you. I remember going from Pollywog to Dolphin, then graduating to Shark and Lifesaver, and Im pretty proud of the fact that I learned to be a good swimmer.

There wasnt any violence or trauma. It was quiet, simple, and suburban. An almost perfect childhoodexcept, for me, every couple years, losing a parent

MY FATHERS FAMILY CAME FROM Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasnt a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude. For yearsdecadeshe worked at the same job. He was a skilled mechanic at the Rapistan Conveyer Company in Mountainside, fixing conveyer belts. Despite the fact that Summit is predominantly white, I cant say there was overt prejudice in the town, at least not within the adult world as I observed it. All my fathers friends, all the guys he worked with, were white working-class dudes. Lunch-bucket dudes. Black and white, they were all cool with one another.

My father was a dark-skinned brother, but my mother was a very fair-skinned lady. From what I understand she was Creole; we think her people originally came from New Orleans. She looked almost like a white woman, which meant she could passas folks used to say back then. Her hair was jet-black. She was slim and very attractive. I recall people telling her she looked like Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge.

The fact that my mother could pass intrigued me, even as a little kid. I understood that it was a big fucking deal. In my household, it was often a topic of quiet discussion between my parents. When you can pass, you get to hear the way white people speak freely with one another when black folks arent around. You get that kind of undercover look at the way white folks really think. So my mother understood racism intimately, from both sides of the fence, and there was never any tolerance for it in the house.

As hazy as a lot of my childhood is to me, I do have a very clear memory of the day when I first learned I was black. Before that, I guess, I never really knew I was black. Everybody figures out theres something called race at some point in their life, and for me it happened when I was about seven years old.

At the time, I was going to Brayton Elementary School in Summit, and I used to have a white friend named Alex. He was one of my closest friends in school. Alex and me were walking over to his house one day after school and we bumped into this other kid from our class named Kennethhe was one of the few other black kids who went to Brayton with me. Soon as we ran into Kenneth, Alex told him, Kenneth, you cant come over. Kenneth looked pretty bummed out but he just walked on, head down, kicking the curb the way little kids do. Then we ran into some more kids from our class and Alex had no problem inviting them to his house to play. We walked along the sidewalk in silence and the question just popped into my head.

I thought you told Kenneth you couldnt have any more friends over? I asked.

Kenneth? Alex laughed. Oh, Kennethhes a darkie.

He said that shit so matter-of-fact. I didnt understand it. My mind was trippin the rest of the afternoon.

Damn, I thought, Alex must think Im white. I guess Im passing, too.

Now, I had this other white friend named Mark, and the rules at his place were a little different than at Alexs. All the kids could come over to Marks place to play in the yard, but when it got dark outside, as soon as the twilight made it hard to see, the white kids were allowed to come inside the house and keep playing but the black kids were sent home. Nobody asked any questions. Nobody said shit. It was just accepted as the way things were. And I was still considered white enoughor maybe they were just confused about what exactly I wasthat I could stay and play with the white kids while the handful of black kids just split.

It was confusing as hell. When I got home, I told my mother about it. She looked at me with this half smile. Honey, people are stupid.

That was her line. Its one of the things I recall her saying to me a lot. People are stupid. She didnt break that down for me, but I understood her to mean: You cant necessarily change the ignorant way people thinkbut you can damn sure control the way it affects you personally. And then you keep it moving.