Ice-T

Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T (or Ice T), is an American rapper working in both the hip hop and heavy metal genres, as well as a songwriter, actor, and producer. 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 following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "Rhyme $yndicate") and released another album, *Power*, which would go platinum. He also released several other albums that went gold.

Ice-T 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 its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", the lyrics of which discussed killing police officers. He 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. Body Count's next album, *Born Dead*, was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s.

As an actor, Ice-T played small parts in the films *Breakin'* and its sequels, *Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo* and *Rappin'*, during the 1980s, before his major role debut, starring as police detective Scotty Appleton in *New Jack City* (1991). He received top billing for his role in *Surviving the Game* (1994) and continued to appear in small roles in TV series and other films throughout the 1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama *Law & Order: Special Victims Unit*, making him the longest-running male series actor in history, according to *Deadline*. A reality television show titled *Ice Loves Coco* ran for three seasons (2011–2013) on E!, featuring the home life of Ice-T and his wife Coco Austin. In 2018, he began hosting the true crime documentary *In Ice Cold Blood* on the Oxygen cable channel, which as of 2020 is in its third season.

### Early Life

Tracy Lauren Marrow, the son of Solomon and Alice Marrow, was born in Newark, New Jersey on February 16, 1958. Solomon was African-American and his mother Alice was from a Louisiana Creole background. For decades, Solomon worked as a conveyor belt mechanic at the Rapistan Conveyor Company. When Marrow was a child, his family moved to upscale Summit, New Jersey. The first time race played a major part in Marrow's life was at the age of seven, when he became aware of the racism leveled by his white friends towards black children. Marrow surmised that he escaped similar treatment because they thought that he was white due to his lighter skin. Relaying this incident to his mother, she told him, "Honey, people are stupid"; her advice and this incident taught Marrow to control the way the negativity of others affected him.

His mother died of a heart attack when he was in third grade. Solomon raised Marrow as a single father for four years, with help from a housekeeper. Marrow's first experience with illicit activity occurred after a bicycle that his father bought him for Christmas was stolen. After Marrow told his father, Solomon shrugged, "Well, then, you ain't got no bike". Marrow stole parts from bicycles and assembled "three or four weird-looking, brightly-painted bikes" from the parts; his father either did not notice or never acknowledged this. When Marrow was thirteen years old, Solomon also died of a heart attack.

Following his father's death, the orphaned Marrow briefly lived with a nearby aunt, then was sent to live with his other aunt and her husband in View Park-Windsor Hills, an upper middle-class Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles. While his cousin Earl was preparing to leave for college, Marrow shared a bedroom with him. Earl was a fan of rock music and listened only to the local rock radio stations; sharing a room with him sparked Marrow's interest in heavy metal music.