Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 12, 1993 TAG: 9302120251
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ICE-T SAYS HE SINGS OF PEACE
Months after the controversial song "Cop Killer" was removed from his "Body Count" album, singer Ice-T still is repeating, sometimes in vain, that he doesn't dislike police.The song lashes out at police corruption, he said at a news conference Thursday at Roanoke Regional Airport. "If the shoe fits . . ."
And he said again that his message is one of peace.
"Where is all of the violence? If this is promoting violence, where are all the dead cops?"
Ice-T - in Western Virginia to speak at Radford University - said police officers feel they're above scrutiny, "above people saying something bad about them."
And when people started speaking out about police, after videos showing Rodney King being beaten in Los Angeles were aired nationwide, the officers needed to put the attention someplace else, he said.
"Cops have got a lot of personal problems. The heat was on them. They turned it onto me."
It worked, he said. "For 1 1/2 months, I was the issue, not actual police brutality."
How did the controversy affect Ice-T, who has received numerous death threats since the album?
"It made me rich," he said, grinning. An embargo on the album hurt him, but he's been sought after for speaking engagements, and since he was released from Time-Warner, Ice-T says, he's earning more per record. He's working on two new films, his own clothing line and a book. And his next album, "Home Invasion," is scheduled to be released March 23.
Despite all of the press coverage he's received in recent months, Ice-T wasn't expecting to stare into a sea of cameras in Roanoke.
"I don't know about the press anymore," he said. "I got off the plane and thought, `What'd I do now?' "
His speech at Radford Thursday night was part of a two-week lecture tour at colleges.
His speeches are more like conversations, he said, a chance to make people understand. "I know a lot of stuff is read about me. People don't understand the music."
"All I want to do is tell the truth," he told an audience of about 1,500 at Radford.
He talked about growing up after his parent's death in Los Angeles. He joined a gang for four years and later was credited with inventing something called "gangster rap." But Ice-T doesn't call it that. "I just wrote about what I was living," he said.
He's also been accused of glamorizing violence and crime. "But crime is very glamorous, that's why people get into it."
People say he sings about killing; he says he sings about threats and brutality, and that he wants to see a world of racial harmony.
"I'm out here breaking my neck trying to bring the races together," he said at Radford.
"It's going to go down," Ice-T, born Tracy Marrow, had said in Roanoke. "Not in my lifetime, but maybe in my son's lifetime."
If justice doesn't come, he said, "the Earth will be leveled."
In Abingdon, far away from the streets of Los Angeles, a store owner has been arrested twice on charges stemming from the sale of "Body Count" to a minor. But the man won't be prosecuted on the first charge, and the second likely won't be pursued.
Ice-T defended his album and his right to record it.
"That's just ignorance," he said when asked about the charges. "We'll overcome this ignorance."
Ice-T still gets death threats, he said. "But you have to have a little courage." He came into Roanoke on Thursday wearing a sweat shirt and jacket, flanked by a friend but no bodyguards.
By the time of the often-humorous Radford address, he had changed into a new-looking Los Angeles Police Department T-shirt.
The speech drew no protesters and only a few security people.