Rapper, actor and Body Count frontman Ice-T made sure his wife Coco and eight-year-old youngest daughter Chanel were included in a crazy schedule that balanced appearing in two seasons of long-running hit police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with life in the studio and on the road.
For Ice-T, 2024 took a spectacular turn when David Gilmour unexpectedly and surprisingly contributed guitar to his interpretation of Pink Floyd’s classic Comfortably Numb on Body Count’s latest album, Merciless.
Do you go into each New Year with any resolutions?
I kinda gave ’em up, but this year I sat down with [my wife] Coco and [daughter] Chanel and said: “What would you guys like to do?” Coco’s never been to Dubai, so that was on a bucket list, as was Japan. Whether I do a Body Count show or an Ice-T show, I can usually use my music to get to cool places.
You sound like a planner more than a ‘let-it-happen’-er.
I was in the military, so every night before we go to bed we have a mission plan for the next day. Of course, those plans can change, but there’s too many moving parts and too much business to not make plans. That’s a good problem to have, to be busy, though.
Body Count have been going for thirty-four years. How did the band start?
It was from touring Europe with Public Enemy and watching the kids mosh to fast rap. I had my friend Ernie C, a virtuoso guitarist, and drummer Beatmaster V, who’s passed away. When I started doing rap records, they wanted to play, but the music was done with samples.
When I came back from the PE tour I said: “Imma start a band. We’ll take the speed of Slayer, the punk sensibility of Suicidal Tendencies and the impending doom of Black Sabbath.”
We had no idea if it was going to sink or swim. We did the first Lollapalooza [festival, in ’91] and got rave reviews. Now I’ve done as many Body Count albums as I’ve done Ice-T albums, so it’s kind of crazy.
You described Body Count’s gigs in Europe this year as some of the best ever. Why were they?
I think because of covid, people were starving for live acts. We’d done two albums in lockdown, the time was right and the energy was there. A highlight was Graspop in Belgium, with a quarter of a million people there. My favourite show was the Paradiso in Amsterdam, that little church where you can see the back of the crowd, and the rafters. Totally different to a festival, it can get real quiet and you can talk to the audience.
A favourite moment of your shows is when Chanel comes on stage.
I don’t like being on tour without the family. My tour bus used to smell of weed but now it smells of Bengay [muscle relief cream], and being with my family fills the energy vacuum after a show. Every night on stage Chanel says goodnight and drops the mic. She’s been into Body Count since she was two – she had a cameo on the album Bloodlust [2017]. I recorded her and Coco in our bathroom. I said: “Pretend daddy’s chasing you with a chainsaw!” That scream went on the mix.
We had the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth seasons of Law & Order: SVU this year. You’ve been with the show since season two. Have you converted the cast to rock music?
Peter Scanavino is a closet punk rocker, so he gets it. Kelli Giddish was in Body Count’s All Love Is Lost video, and Chris Meloni used Necessary Evil for one of his indie films. It’s a little harsh for Mariska [Hargitay], she’s more of a Fleetwood Mac person.
You’ve been acting for a long time. What do you like about it?
It’s entertaining and fun, and it gives me enough money that I can make the fucking record I want to make without a company saying: “If you do this, it won’t sell.” This job allows me to do my art the way I want to do it. I make music to remain sane.
The single Fuck What You Heard lays into US politics with the inference that it’s a Bloods and Crips type of situation.
It’s just ironic that [the parties] wear red and blue. The gang thing is that once you say you’re Republican you have to roll with everything they say, and once you say you’re a Democrat you have to agree with everything they say. That’s a gang mentality. You gotta stay down. And if you’re the gang leader, you’re like: “Look, if you’re in my gang you agree with every fucking thing I say.” And I don’t think anybody truly does.
One girl asked me: “In your job, did you become more conservative?” And I’m like: “Define conservative.” You can’t even define the shit. Like, what is liberal? I know what is your definition, could be totally misconstrued from my definition, so I don’t know. But hopefully we don’t blow this whole fucking planet up. I think that’s the big problem right now – we’re on the brink of thermonuclear war.
You’ve ended the year with a glorious update of Comfortably Numb, featuring David Gilmour. How did you pull that off?
I used to listen to that bass line and think: “I could rap over that.” With the new album I thought why don’t we just do it. My lyrics are saying we fucked up; if God is looking at us we ain’t looking good. We’ve got all this war and tension, and we just scroll through, change the channel. We’re comfortably numb until the pain comes to our front door.
So I wrote the song and approached the publishing company, but they said that Floyd don’t clear samples or accept remakes. We were defeated. Then our manager got hold of David’s manager, who got it to David, and he loved it. But we had to talk to Roger Waters – and I didn’t know about the situation with Roger and David. We were fucked again. But Roger asked: “Who’s singing it?” “Ice-T.” “Approved!”
The next thing was that David asked to be on it – and be in the video! He gave us more than we could imagine, and it’s got a thumbs-up from the listeners. To connect with a little band called Body Count says a lot about David Gilmour, more than the music. God bless him.
Merciless is out now via Century Media
