Not a surprise that OG Ice-T had some negative things to say about a police officer. Although he has been in the rap game since 1987, he is most notorious for a song released when he fronted the first rap-metal band Body Count. That song, called “Cop Killer”, caused such an uproar that the album had to be re-released with that track left off of it. Every uptight police force in the country took it personally, although Ice-T continually asserted that it was art imitating life and was a response to specific acts of police brutality. The LAPD in particular countered that it would cause a wave of attacks on officers of the law. Somehow, they—along with the help of the NRA—won that argument, despite the First Amendment.
Ice-T and NYPD: Way to go, Officer Fisher.
When Ice-T was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt and having an expired New York Driver’s License (but a valid New Jersey license), he and his most interesting wife Coco were bringing their puppy to the vet. Of course, he could have made things a little easier by not immediately calling the arresting officer a “punk b****”, but the cop didn’t have to counter with his own string of obscenities. As soon as it happened, the 53 year-old rapper/actor/producer took to Twitter to express his rage to a wider audience. The thing is, Ice-T really only has two speeds: sarcastic and really, really enraged. Pulling him over on one bogus charge and another ridiculous one could have only one possible outcome, and that would be one very ticked off rap legend, who gave the officer’s name and badge number in one of his tweets. Someone will probably be sitting at a desk for a while until the smoke clears and every gangsta fan of Ice-T (and there are many) forgets about it.
Ice-T, in case you don’t know, is considered to be the first to define “gangsta rap”. He spent most of junior high and high school living in Crenshaw, an area of Los Angeles known for gang violence and drug trafficking. It was there that he saw only the drug dealers and pimps making real money, and was witness to police behavior that can be gently described as “unethical”. He was able to turn his experiences around and got into the rap game, essentially creating his own genre by bringing to light the things that were really going on in the inner cities. The police didn’t like this.
Having now released eight solo albums and collaborated on many others—including the Body Count project—he is considered an OG, a term he created for the name of his 1991 release OG: Original Gangster. He flaunts his wealth as he saw the pimps and drug dealers did, although his money is earned legally. He became so famous for his love of diamonds that custom jeweler TraxNYC named a $17,000 diamond-encrusted bracelet after him.
The irony of the ongoing animosity between Ice-T and the police is that the rapper, after honing his acting skills in well-known movies like New Jack City, Ricochet, and Surviving the Game, now plays a cop on the long-running series Law & Order: SVU. The major problem that most government organizations have with Ice-T is that he is extremely intelligent and has ‘street cred’. He is not someone that they want to have speaking out against them.
This gives one Officer Fisher a reason to lay low for a while. That is, if the Chief of the NYPD doesn’t bench him for good for being an idiot.