Quotes from Ice T

Redemption just means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong.

I think that men need to have a little bit of manism. You have feminism. I don't have a problem with that.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

You can't get what you want all the time in life.

The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.

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.

'New Jack City' was a perfect marriage of music and film. They used a lot of musicians: myself, Christopher Williams. People that were popular because of their music were given the chance to act. And the soundtrack was incredible.

I think, people look at me, and they say, 'You were very aggressive,' I say, 'Yeah,' you know, and I've made a better life for myself, for my son, so I should reflect that with my music now. I shouldn't still be rhyming like that; that would be me lying.

I don't have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.

You have to come in on a professional level to make it, otherwise you just can't get into rap.

We have groups that do that, but I can't rap with the mentality of an 18 year old when I'm in my 30's.

An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.

I'm on the front line and I am a rapper.

I started rapping before anybody had ever bought a car from it. It was truly about the art form and the culture, more so than now, where it's a successful way to make money. Back then you had to be doing it because you liked it.

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.

Every once in a while, I hear somebody call me Tracy to try to let me know that they know me, you know, personally. But most of my real friends will call me Trey, or 'Ice' was basically short for Iceberg. So they would call me - some of my boys call me Berg.

If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it.

You can't just sing the song and live another life.

I was a pretty bad person early in my life.

I couldn't possibly have lived all the things that Ice-T on the records lived.

I think everybody wants to redeem themselves after they've done something that might be considered negative. I don't think anyone wants to go to the grave negative.

Everything we do helps the new artists in the long run.

I've been in crime for a long time and I know that the actual move isn't the actual crime: the crime continues [afterwards].

If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.