ICE-T
Ice-T (born Tracy Lauren Marrow; February 16, 1958) is an American musician, rapper, songwriter, actor, record executive, record producer, and author. He began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays; the second hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker after Slick Rick’s La Di Da Di. He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced on his 1991 rap album O.G.: Original Gangster, on the track titled “Body Count”. The band released their self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track “Cop Killer”, which glamorized killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. (More from Wikipedia)
Will Smith parlayed their hit song into a stint on a sitcom called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and later became one of the biggest movie stars of our time following roles in summer blockbusters like Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997). He is not the only hip hop star to move to the small and/or big screen. Ice Cube, one of the founders of gangsta rap in his group N.W.A., has starred in numerous films in a variety of genres, such as All About the Benjamins, Barbershop, and XXX: State of the Union. Ice-T – whose debut album Rhyme Pays (1987) was “the first hip hop album to carry an explicit content sticker” (according to Wikipedia) – is well-known for his prominent role in the long-running television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
(September 2016)
