The two-time Grammy Award-winner isn’t hiding out in the desert; he’s cooling off in it — most likely in a swimming pool somewhere in Chandler.
“You might spot me anywhere,” he says in a recent exclusive interview with Phoenix New Times, “at the nightclubs, the restaurants, and stuff like that — but we only occupy this house maybe 90 days out of the year.”
The rest of the year? Ice-T is on set filming "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," rocking stadiums with his metal band Body Count, acting in films or spitting bars and stories on stages and podcasts around the world. But when it’s time to recharge, chances are he’s flying into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, headed straight for the Valley heat and some well-earned downtime.
Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I was an Ice-T fan. I watched on television as he evolved from a breakdancer to a gangster rap pioneer, then into a full-blown movie star in "New Jack City." So, when I spotted the Original Gangster himself — not at a Hollywood premiere or a New York afterparty, but right here in Phoenix — it was an unexpected and super-dope surprise.
“It’s not like L.A. or New York,” he says. “People here are low-key. This is not a celebrity sightings city.”
Unless you were at Trill, Phoenix’s premier hip-hop shop, on July 12, when Ice-T showed up unannounced at the store’s sixth anniversary party. He posted up, took photos with old-school heads and the new generation of hip-hop fans and signed everything from records to CDs.
That’s where we exchanged info and kicked off this deep conversation.
Ice-T performs onstage during the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival presented by Capital One - Bacardi presents The Cookout: Hip Hop's 50th Anniversary Celebration at Pier 86 on October 15, 2023, in New York City.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for NYCWFF
Loss to legacy: A young Ice-T in L.A.
“I lost my mother when I was in the third grade. I lost my father when I was in the seventh grade,” Ice-T says. “And I was shipped as a kid (from New Jersey) to Los Angeles to live with my father's sister, whom I had never met.”That sudden shift landed him in View Park, a quiet, upper-middle-class pocket in south Los Angeles, quite a distance from the gang-dominated neighborhoods that would later shape his worldview. “Nowhere near the ghetto," he says. "It's nice, but at that time, they were integrating kids into schools.”
Known to his fam, peers, and teachers in the 1970s as Tracy Lauren Marrow, he was bused to Palms Junior High in Culver City. And by the time high school hit, young Ice was done with the long bus rides. “I decided I didn't want to catch the bus,” he adds. “I just wanted to walk across the street to Crenshaw High School, and that’s where everything started to change.” Crenshaw High was one of the most notorious schools in Los Angeles then.
“You got gangs at that school,” Ice-T recalls. “It was being run by the Rollin' 60s, Harlem Crips, 8-Tray Gangsters and Hoover Crips. Before I got there, there were actually Brims — now they call them Bloods.” Though he never officially joined a gang, he quickly adapted to his surroundings.
“I’m not a gang member, but I’m about as affiliated as you could be,” he says. “Just knew to wear blue. Just knew how to talk to everybody.”During those high school years in the mid-’70s, Ice-T began writing and reciting what he described as “Crip rhymes” or “gang raps” — gritty, poetic verses that rhymed and reflected the realities of gang life. On a past episode of the award-winning Drink Champs podcast, he even spit one of those early rhymes, recounting the tension and violence between Crips in blue and Bloods in red — delivered with rhythm, flow and raw authenticity.
He didn’t know it then, but those verses laid the groundwork for a new form of storytelling: a lyrical style that would later be known as gangsta rap, or at least a significant component.
His stage name was inspired by Iceberg Slim, the infamous pimp-turned-author. Ice-T used to memorize and recite Slim’s slick, streetwise lines to the gang members, unknowingly building a cadence and rapid lyric delivery that would define his voice.
By 17, he left his aunt’s pad and set out on his own. “I had a Social Security check (from his late father),” he remembers. “I got an apartment for $100 a month by giving the check that was coming in to the landlord. He knew he was going to get paid. He would give me back the extra $150.”
Living alone, with minimal resources, Ice-T hustled to survive. “Got my girlfriend pregnant, had a kid," he adds. "Decided I was going to try to do something right — I went in the Army." He served four years in the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks in Oahu, Hawaii.
Rap as redemption
While stationed in Hawaii, something unexpected happened: rap music found its way into Ice's life, passed along through dubbed cassette tapes from fellow soldiers hailing from New York. Like many of us around the world, including here in metro Phoenix, our earliest exposure to hip-hop came from family or friends in the military, who, during military leave, brought back cassette tapes of New York park jams and later, radio shows. This was how the raw, unfiltered energy of New York’s early rap and DJ scene spread, landing in places as far-flung as military bases, desert towns and overseas.“That’s where I got indoctrinated with hip-hop,” Ice-T says. “Kids in the Army had rap tapes. I thought it was something I could do.”
Ice returned to Los Angeles with a new mindset. He breakdanced, mixed and scratched on turntables, and rapped.
He continues, "I'm making rhymes and stuff. And then I get to make a record called "Cold Wind Madness," which was my very first actual recorded rap record." The electro and rap song was produced by would-be multi-Grammy Award Winners Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and released in 1983. The record got Ice into the Radio Club in L.A.
“It was the first real hip-hop club I’d ever been in,” he says. “All they played was rap music. There were breakdancers already dancing, and they were bringing in artists from New York … Cold Crush Brothers and the Soul Sonic Force.” The crowd, Ice recalls, was packed with artsy trendsetters, many of them white. “Madonna was in there, Malcolm McLaren, Adam Ant,” he says. “It was a very trendy club that just played rap records. And in that club, producers from The Cannon Group walked in and said, ‘We can make a movie about breaking.’”
Those club nights ultimately led to "Breakin’," the 1984 West Coast hip-hop blockbuster.
“They saw me on stage and said, ‘OK, you’ll be the rapper.’ [Chris the] Glove was the house DJ," he recalls. "When they decided to make the movie, they cast me — if you look at the credits, I’m called ‘featured rap talker.’ They didn’t even know what a rapper was.”
But for us groms around the world — including young Arizonans — "Breakin’" was our first authentic taste of all four elements of California hip-hop, delivered through silver screens and VHS tapes. Thanks to Ice-T, Boogaloo Shrimp, Shabba Doo, Handyman and the rest of the cast, the culture spread far.
The street exit strategy
And while the movies and the records produced some money for Ice, he always kept his hustle and got paid in more ways than one. In fact, before the Breakin' movies dropped, Ice was already rolling around California in a turbocharged Porsche.“Nobody had them yet,” Ice-T says of the fast Porsche they rolled in. “We could hit the club, and people thought we were successful rappers — but we just had street money. We were all very active on the street level."
I reminded him of a scene from "Breakin’ 'N' Enterin’," a TV documentary on early West Coast hip-hop, in which he and Nat the Cat are posted up by a Porsche.
“It wasn’t rap money,” Ice says. “That cat was one of my crimeys. My boys didn’t get the rap thing. They were like, ‘What’s that rap bullshit? You better get this money.’ But I liked it.”
Ice was drawn to rapping, inspired by the records coming out of New York. “When you're trying to be a rapper, you're going to rap like the rappers you see,” he says. “So I was trying to be like Melle Mel and all those guys I admired. But I was leaving out my identity — I was leaving out the Porsche, the lifestyle, the other person.”
In those early days, he kept his rap persona separate from his real one — a stylish, street-savvy hustler from South Central.
“I was wearing a costume being a rapper, like don’t connect these two characters,” he says. “In Breakin’, there’s a scene where I’ve got on a Neiman Marcus hat. What does Neiman Marcus have to do with hip-hop? Nothing. But we were robbing stores and running around Beverly Hills during the day.”
That all changed after a night out with Def Jam founder Russell Simmons. “Me and Russ was kicking it, and they called me out of the audience to come on stage,” Ice recalls. “That day, I was just normal — Fila, K-Swiss, my perm, my little Kangol. I didn’t look New York. I was very L.A.”
After the performance, Simmons pulled him aside with a game-changing piece of advice: “That’s how you should dress. That’s your look. You’re L.A. You ain’t Melle Mel. You, Ice-T.”
From then on, he embraced his true identity. “All the hip-hop gimmicks went out,” Ice says. That’s why on the 1987 Rhyme Pays album cover, he’s posed in a Porsche under palm trees, with a girl by his side and a friend behind — unapologetically repping Los Angeles.
The birth of gangsta rap
The green light came when Ice-T heard “PSK” — Schoolly D’s groundbreaking track about Philadelphia’s Parkside Killers. “It was the first record about a gang,” Ice-T says. “When I heard it, I was like, this real street shit can work.”That moment inspired “6 in the Mornin’,” his 1986 breakout single and one of gangsta rap’s earliest anthems. “It had the same cadence as PSK,” he says. “Then Cube wrote ‘Boyz n the Hood,’ and all these records started flowing. It opened up a whole floodgate."
Still, he wasn’t sure if people would embrace it. “I was taught anything illegal should remain a secret,” Ice says. “So, when I started doing the gangster [music] shit, I didn’t know if anybody would like it.” But it did, here in the Valley and the rest of the world by the 1990s.
Even as his rap career took off, the line between fame and street life remained razor thin — until the two worlds finally began to clash.
“When I came home from the Army, people were robbing jewelry stores. I wasn’t a drug dealer, but I was around cats who knew how to get money,” Ice says. “But once I started getting known, I told my crew—I can’t break the law no more.”
He sat down with his people to set boundaries.
“I said, ‘Don’t tell me nothing. I want to be able to pass a polygraph. If they ask me something .... I don’t know.’ I didn’t want to self-incriminate anybody. And I said, ‘Don’t even talk about it around me."
There’s a reason he’s open about it now in 2025. “There’s a statute of limitations on crime—seven years,” he explains.
Like the real-life gangsters he once rolled with in the mid-’70s into the '80s, Ice-T brought authenticity into the booth. And when he laid that gangsta rap over thumpin' beats, the fans responded.
“All the kids were like, ‘That’s my shit!’ I’m like, ‘Oh, you like this? I can do this all day.’” That was when Ice-T stopped imitating other rappers and started creating something entirely his own.
“If you listen to the lyrics of ‘Original Gangster,’ it tells the story,” he says. “I used to write rhymes like other rappers. My boy said, ‘That ain’t you, Ice.’ And I thought, sat back, thought up a new track. I didn’t fantasize — I kicked the pure facts. Shit got scared ‘cause they were unprepared. Who would tell it how it really was? Who dared?”
In 1987, he dropped his first Rhyme Pays album, and the film Colors hit theaters, starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. Like Breakin’ just a few years earlier, it introduced audiences worldwide to Los Angeles culture — but this time the focus was raw, unfiltered gang life, zeroing in on the Bloods and the Crips. Drawing from over a decade of lived experience, Ice-T delivered the film’s theme song — a track that surged up the charts and blared through metro Phoenix’s booming stereo systems on our cruise strips, house parties, clubs, and car shows.
From there came a string of film roles, including New Jack City, where Ice played Detective Scotty Appleton. At first, he questioned taking on the role of a cop. Still, the performance won over his fans — even those from his former life — especially since it came before his heavy metal group Body Count dropped their infamous protest track “Cop Killer” in 1992. The song sparked national controversy, and while some media outlets claimed it was recalled, the album was republished without the track.
He released more songs and albums, took on more film roles, and in 2000 joined "Law & Order: SVU" in its second season, debuting in the episode “Wrong Is Right.” As Odafin 'Fin' Tutuola, a former narcotics detective turned SVU cop, Ice has been on the show for 25 years, still bringing that signature mix of grit and authenticity.
But acting is just one lane for him. Ice has always been a hustler, still dabbling in new ventures today.
Fast-forward to Arizona 2025 — a friend of mine recently pulled out a cannabis vape pen with Ice’s name on it — the Peach Ice-T vape pen from Dime Industries, made in collaboration with the rap icon.
And the branding doesn’t stop there — Ice-T has even popped up at Raising Cane’s drive-thrus across metro Phoenix. When my kids, a 9-year-old and a 15-year-old, asked, “Who’s Ice-T?” I laughed and said, “We used to listen to him when I was your age.”
Ice is also a co-owner of a dispensary in New Jersey.
Ice-T and Coco Austin attend the "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" 25th Anniversary Celebration at Edge at Hudson Yards on January 16, 2024, in New York City.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Hustler to dispensary owner
Ice-T is now part of the legal weed industry — though he’s quick to clarify he doesn’t smoke. “I never done blow, never smoked weed,” he says. “I tried selling coke once. I gave a key to my crew to sell. Nobody brought back all the money. Everybody had a story. I was like, (jokingly) ‘I’m supposed to kill y’all now?’ That didn’t work for me.”But he saw a business opportunity in cannabis. “I met Governor (of New Jersey) Phil Murphy at a fundraiser. He said he was going to legalize it. I felt like I had inside info,” he says. Ice reached out to the owners of The Medicine Woman in California, and together they opened The Medicine Woman in New Jersey. It took five years to get the license.
“These people already had a dispensary, so they brought their general manager and staff, and we opened.”
Now Ice-T’s experimenting with edibles. “I took a gummy the other night and was talking to this dude… then I forgot what the fuck I was saying mid-sentence,” he laughs. “Takes like two hours to hit. And regarding Ice not smoking weed back in the day, he says, "I needed to stay sharp in the streets. Being sober was a survival tactic.”
Mentoring Murkemz
Ice's Arizona presence goes beyond just shopping and popping in. Ice-T has been mentoring local Phoenix rapper Murkemz, who appeared in two recent Phoenix Times pieces.“The first thing that caught my attention was: he can really rap,” Ice-T says. “He’s not basic. He can change his style and tempo. He’s got skill.” Their connection started when Ice-T liked one of Murkemz’s Instagram posts. Murkemz’s metro Phoenix team was smart; they reached out. “It’s just networking,” Ice-T says. “If someone you admire likes your post, hit them up. That’s what Murkemz did.”
They’ve since collaborated on shows, with Murkemz featuring one of Ice-T’s artists, Fetty DeMarco, on his “We Outside” remix.“I like the kid,” Ice-T says. “He’s got grind, hustle, and a good team. But I told him it’s not about doing a record with me. It’s about making the best records you can.”
The Formula for a hit? Ice-T offers blunt, OG-level industry advice: “Rap is a tool, like singing. Just because you can rap doesn’t mean you’ll be a star. You need a hit record. And the fastest way? Collab with a hot R&B singer.”
He lists examples: “Eminem with Rihanna, Jay-Z with Beyoncé, Kendrick with SZA, Meth with Mary J. Blige, ODB with Mariah Carey.”
“Now it’s time for Murkemz to define what his lane is,” he continues. “When I listen to Drake, I expect girl talk. Mobb Deep? Guns. Me? Gangster, pimp shit. So when I listen to Murkemz, what am I about to get?” That’s the next step, Ice says. “He’s so good at everything, it’s hurting him a bit. He hasn’t carved out that identity yet. But once he does? He’s outta here.”
Desert living
After decades in the spotlight — music, movies, and more than 500 episodes of "Law & Order: SVU" — Ice-T says Arizona gave him something new: stillness.“This is all we needed,” he says. “Chandler is peaceful. It’s not Vegas. It’s not New York. It’s not L.A. I can sit in my room, play Xbox, and Coco can go out with her sisters.”
He followed Coco out to Arizona about 25 years ago, back when their relationship was beginning. Over time, her parents and extended family moved here too, and now they’re all part of a tight-knit unit — a full-on family compound under the desert sun. Ice-T’s older son and daughter can drive out to spend time with their little sister, Chanel, and Coco’s sisters and cousins. The pace is slower, the air cleaner, and the love runs deep.
“Out here, it’s just comfortable. It’s the simple life. I like the people in AZ,” he says.
And that’s precisely what Ice-T always wanted — no red carpet, no paparazzi, no flex. Just the Original Gangster, lying back in the Valley, soaking in a bit of quiet before the next chapter begins.
