Ice-T

Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T (or Ice T), is an American rapper and actor.

He is active in both hip hop and heavy metal.

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 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.

Marrow moved to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles when he was in the eighth grade.

He attended Palms Junior High, which was predominantly made up of white students, and included black students who traveled by bus from South Central to attend.

He then attended Crenshaw High School, which was almost entirely made up of black students.

Marrow stood out from most of his friends because he did not drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or use drugs.

During Marrow's time in high school, gangs became more prevalent in the Los Angeles school system.

Students who belonged to the Crips and Bloods gangs attended Crenshaw, and fought in the school's hallways.

Marrow, while never an actual gang member, was affiliated with the former.

Marrow began reading the novels of Iceberg Slim, which he memorized and recited to his friends, who enjoyed hearing the excerpts and told him, "Yo, kick some more of that by Ice, T", giving Marrow his famous nickname.

Marrow and other Crips wrote and performed "Crip Rhymes".

Ice-T 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.

As an actor, Ice-T played small parts in the films Breakin (1984) and its sequels, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo and Rappin (1984 and 1985 respectively), before his major role debut, starring as police detective Scotty Appleton in New Jack City (1991).

The following year, he founded the record label Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "") and released another album, Power (1988), which would go platinum.

He also released several other albums that went gold, including The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! (1989), O.G. Original Gangster (1991) and Home Invasion (1993).

Ice-T co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count in 1990, which he introduced on O.G. Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count".

Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s and one in the 2000s before focusing on both his acting career and Body Count, who have released seven studio albums to date, the latest being 2020's Carnivore.

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 follow-up solo album, Home Invasion, was released through Priority Records.

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 ran for three seasons.