For the casual observer, Ice-T is probably best known as a news story, the writer of Cop Killer who took on the American constitution and lost. In person, he is engaging and affable, at ease with himself; quick to laugh, but quick to turn a difficult question into a tense confrontation. The version of himself he chooses to sell to the media is a classic American rags-to-riches fable, from south central Los Angeles orphan to Beverly Hills celebrity via years of gang membership, petty crime and a spell in the army.

These days Ice-T is a multimedia giant. He has written a book, acted in half a dozen films, recorded six rap albums, including the 1991 classic, Original Gangster, and made two albums with his hard-rock band, Body Count, the latter seeing him cross over into the white youth MTV market and nearly derail his whole career.

The track Cop Killer, on Body Count’s debut 1992 album, described a revenge fantasy against corrupt policemen and mentioned Rodney King years before the film footage of his beating became one of the defining news images of the 1990s. Warner Bros shareholders withdrew finance in protest, and Charlton Heston stormed a board meeting to deliver record company executives an example of Body Count’s lyrics in a sonorous, classically trained voice.

“Charlton Heston was a punk,” says Ice-T, “a hired gun. He’s also a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association. He’s after the Cop Killer record, but the NRA lobbies to keep legal a bullet called the Cop Killer, which is a Teflon-coated bullet that will go through a police vest. Who needs this bullet? Charlton Heston didn’t have the slightest idea who I was. It was funny because when they got him on TV he said, `Let me explain the words to Killer Cop, I mean Cop Killer.’ Even his Freudian slip proves the right interpretation of that record.”

In the end, even though Warner tried to back him up, Ice-T left the label, and a pile of movie, comic-book and television deals, to start out on his own. Warner’s staff were receiving death threats. “They stayed down with me, but I said, `Let me go, you don’t need this.’ In America, you’re only as free to speak as they allow you to be.”

While 1993’s Home Invasion was a bitter and focused reaction against the Cop Killer controversy, Ice’s new album, Return of the Real, ditches much of the passion in favour of 1970s blaxploitation movie soundtrack pastiche, though there are highlights. It opens with the
shocking Pimp Anthem, a hilarious recasting of the traditional smoochy rap ballad into the diary of a violent pimp, but also includes How Does It Feel and Inside of a Gangsta, two genuine and non-ironic love songs that see Ice-T “slowing down and sending out a message to all the fly ladies”, and sounding like your dad trying to be romantic. The single, I Must Stand, is the standout track, pitting a bitter autobiographical narrative against soulful backing vocals and trip-hop beats; while The Rap Game’s Hijacked is a return to the polemic of old: an attack on the white-controlled black-music industry. At one point in the track Ice describes a record company executive who sits behind the table as “a Jewish motherfer who don’t know shit”. This should be seen in the context of the song rap is primarily owned and profited from by non-blacks but it still raises the spectre of anti-semitism that has dogged rap since its godfathers, Public Enemy, expelled founder member Professor Griff for indefensible, Nation of Islam-inspired, anti-Jewish remarks.

As a black American celebrity, Ice-T is naturally on speaking terms with the Nation of Islam’s founder, Louis Farrakhan, although he has no time for its religious dogma. In his book, The Ice Opinion, he tells Farrakhan: “I’m down with the Muslims and understand your religion can be very uplifting, but I can’t give up my bacon. And I ain’t gonna tell you I wouldn’t be with no white woman.”

Ice says Farrakhan respected him and he, in turn, respected the minister for that. I asked if that included respecting Farrakhan’s beliefs that Judaism was “a gutter religion”. “The Jews want him to deal with them on their terms,” says Ice, “and he says, `Why? I don’t have to bow to you to talk to you. I have a religion, the Muslim religion, which is just as powerful as yours, let’s discuss this.’ Jewish people don’t wanna admit they’re black.”

However strange these comments might seem, on Born Dead, one of the few Body Count tracks that breaks through the inherent banality of its hard-rock format, Ice posits a solidarity with the Jewish people if you are oppressed, then you are black. It’s unlikely that he’d buy
into Farrakhan’s beliefs wholesale anyway, because of his well-documented suspicion of all organised religions.

“I don’t believe in a particular God,” Ice elaborates. “I don’t believe that anybody on this earth has any bigger connections to God than me. Every single word in every religious book was written by a human being … not God. So who is to say at this moment that God isn’t speaking through me? All religions are based on faith. So why can’t people just have faith in me? I can see the headlines: `Ice-T says he is God.’ I believe we’re all gods,” he laughs, “not just me.”

Ice’s attitude to the American system shows a similar pragmatism. He doesn’t dream of change, but adopts instead an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach. “You’re not gonna change the system … the same system’s been in effect since the beginning of time. People with the power will control. But I own my own label now, to show these kids you can do it. That’s the type of role model they need. And I’m thrilled to be able to move out into the hills, because every other day my next-door neighbour steps out of his house and gripes, `Niggers on the left of me, Jews on the right of me.’ I’m very happy to be annoying my neighbour.” Liberal critics would love Ice-T to be a textbook revolutionary, but he’s not that simple. Baadass TV, the magazine show he fronts for Channel 4, has been criticised for failing to reflect all aspects of black experience “It’s just another nigger minstrel show,” said Trevor Phillips, an LWT producer but it has a sense of humour that transcends the earnestness of most minority programming.

As a parting shot, did Ice-T ever have it out with Charlton Heston? “I never met him, but we had him in traffic one day, we were in a car right next to him. I’m not saying whether we had a gun or not, but we were right next to him, he pulled up next to us in a black Corvette. And it was dark and we coulda just got him right there on the street. We would have seen if he was like Moses. We’d have took him to the LA lake and seen if could really walk on water.”

During the press conference before this interview, Ice explained he was setting up a web site on the Internet. His aim? “To take over the world.”