WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1145 - Ice-T

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Tumultuous times call for sensible comments from voices of reason. Who better to speak to the issues of the day than Ice-T? The legendary rapper, rocker and actor talks about his personal experiences with COVID to offer some much-needed perspective. He also gives his take on the importance of the anti-racism protests around the world and how it relates to the race-driven firestorm over his Body Count album in 1992. Marc and Ice also talk about Redd Foxx, Richard Belzer, and a time Marc saw Ice at an aquarium in Spain. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at TorontoRock.com

Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it come on get in the fucking present let's do it let's be here be here now whatever the eternal whatever eckhart tolle this this is it i'm living this second this second this second i'm in the now now i'm not now it's uh now it's true though. Now. It's true, though, man. Hey, all you got is this moment, right? And then the one after it, and then the shitty one after that, and then like, uh-oh. What about seven moments from now? That's going to be trouble.

But see, that way of thinking is not correct. Stay in the moment. Fine. What's happening, people? Today, Ice-T is on the show today. That was something. I made myself very crazy about that, about interviewing Ice-T because he's fucking Ice-T. Doesn't all right, he's Ice-T, but that might be an intense, intimidating guy to talk to. And I made myself fucking crazy for two days. Listened to the new Body Count record, some of his other older records.

Dug in a little bit. Yeah, I was surprised. I'd forgotten. Wasn't surprised. I'd forgotten, you know, that there were a couple of Ice-T albums that I listened to the fuck out of when i was a younger man certainly that first uh body count record and then that freedom of speech record because i was going through this stuff and i'm like i not only did i have this record i listened to it sort of constantly for a while both of those records but i also had this weird experience where I never met him before, but we shared some space together, Ice-T and I, back in the 90s, the mid-90s.

I think it was like 96, 97. I was on a trip to Spain with my first wife. It was a honeymoon that we'd put off, and we in uh i think we're in barcelona spain at an aquarium and um iced he was there with his i guess uh his wife and a daughter young young kid and they were walking through the aquarium uh in front of me and Kim. And I told the story about this on Conan O'Brien on December 10th, 1997. So it must have happened shortly before that, you know, within a year or two. I can't track things, but I'll share that. I'll share my telling of that story about being at the aquarium walking behind ice

tea and his family because i wanted to this was uh that conan o'brien appearance i'm walking behind ice tea and we're going through the exhibits okay and for some reason at each tank he would read the description all right i guess the moral of this story once i get into it is that it's not what you say it's how you say it right because i'd be standing right behind him and he'd be reading he go coastal marsh community and I I don't know just the way he said community I'm looking in the tank for social injustice you know what I mean like oh the macro are keeping the guppies down you know and then and then like the next take yeah the next take and I'm dying I think it's the greatest thing in the world.

He goes, look at that big ass crab. So we move from social injustice to, oh, just an observation. He's the guy that I would want to hear narrate on your way through the museum. Everything, just the menu, corned beef and eggs, please. Yeah, coastal marsh community. yeah coastal marsh community i'll bring that up to ice when i talk to him in a few minutes so it you know the the bottom line is the point i guess i'm trying to make is that uh after all my insanity after all my uh flailing insecurity and fear it was was great. It was great to talk to him. He was up for it.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I think he had a nice time too. So they had this piece in the New York Times on Saturday, an interview that I did with David Itzkoff, who just wanted to interview me about my relationship with Lynn. And they put that in the paper. I guess what really sort of interest him initially outside of, you know, our creative relationship was me experiencing and going through this grief publicly. It's a choice I made. And I've just been

so, you know, the heavy heartedness about that and the sort of emotional roller coaster every day but like i have been feeling physically ill for months really and every few weeks i think it's covid and every once in a while i feel like it's um allergies but now it's just gotten terrible and i'm just every day i'm just queasy and the the weight of the fucking world you know and i in and it's not so much i mean i'm fighting depression like everybody else is i'm dealing with grief but the truth of the matter is is that um you know even before lynn died i was getting up every morning wondering if my fucking cat was alive or what condition my cat was in and that's ongoing you know this is still going on and it's just draining me it's killing me and he's very bad right now and i just you know i know we've covered this before but it's like it's

it's gonna happen i didn't realize that's you know probably what's making me so physically you know outside of you know grief pandemic stress isolation sadness fear is that every day every day i wake up at 5 30 6 in the morning and wonder if my cat's alive if today's the day every day but i will tell you this i still have had the energy you know to uh to lose my shit at my father. I'm okay with him now. But, you know, I did find time to call my dad a fucking dummy for political views that were shallow and just sort of like his brain is some sort of recording device. And it only records when the information connects

to some sort of anger. And he's sitting at home. I don't know why. I don't know. There's nothing I can do to stop it. Watching not Fox News. He's watching the dumber, more propagandistic one. The One America News Network.

I don't know. He thinks it's news. But someone's guiding him. He's surrounded with Republican people and his new new family and i just lost my shit it was and it was my dad was uh what i thought to be an intelligent guy uh you know a sophisticated guy uh uh but not with politics and it turns out maybe not with anything you know other than what his focus was which was medicine at a time so i thought we could engage around a little bit of a discussion uh to get get off of you know whatever his problems are whatever my sadness is and so i asked him as a doctor you know what he

thought about this pandemic situation and how it's being handled. He says, well, clearly we've got to get back at China. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? What about what we're dealing with? Well, I mean, it came from there. What has that got to do? Lost my shit. Literally lost my shit. Called my father a fucking idiot.

And I, you know and and then i felt bad because you know he's old now when lynn was alive and when i was more engaged and grounded and enjoying life before the pandemic before the loss you know i i had a certain amount of ability to sort of compartmentalize and manage, you know, whatever I'd put on the back burner or let go of, but obviously not totally. It's hard to let go of everything about your parents. And,

you know, on some level I should be excited that they're still alive. And, but I don't know. I felt bad about it. And I called him. It wasn't quite an apology. I think I said, I don't really care whether or not I talk to you at all. And he goes, well, I do. And I'm like, all right, well, let's try and figure this out then. then and i said i just want i just it's when you talk about that stuff in such a shallow way in such a you know an unsourced way you know be one thing if you had a political point of view which you don't because right after i hung up on him and called him a fucking idiot he technically left a message look i don't care i don't care who who wins i don't give a shit i don't really give a shit i don't give a

shit about pelosi and you know this fauci business it's like so he's still reeling off these talking points that that have recorded on the anger tape in his brain but disconnected the things and telling and saying like i hope i hope biden wins i don't give a shit but i didn't call him back and now if i don't come back i said look you know when you talk like that it's it's just it's embarrassing and it makes me lose respect for you because it's it it's shallow and dumb and it makes me angry that I have to sort of relive this embarrassment this lack of respect and also to to find out that, you know, maybe in your old age or maybe always you just are not a sophisticated thinker. And now, look, I'm more than capable of indulging other opinions on some level. It's aggravating.

It makes me angry. But, I mean, if I can see them track it back to, you know, a point of view. But he doesn't have one. Completely reactive. it back to you know a point of view but he doesn't have one completely reactive so i told him that and you know he got it but you know we'll see maybe i'm too selfish too i don't know but that's my story bill burr came by the other day sit and talk about the world, about life, about helicopters, about grief, about children. And he ate some cake, thank God. You know, Bill's a pretty healthy guy. I didn't know how it was going to go, but he ate the cake.

Bill, he ate the cake. Then I sent him the fucking recipe. It was nice. I hadn't seen Bill in a long time, not since before the pandemic probably. And, you know, it was nice to sit down and catch up. All right, so listen. We got Ice-T coming up. His most recent album with Body Count is called Carnivore.

It was released back in March right as the pandemic hit, so he wasn't able to tour with it. Talk about that a little bit. He also re-released a new studio edit of their 2017 song, No Lives Matter, in support of the anti-racism movement. And this is me and Ice-T coming up. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance

and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here? You'll never leave Japan alive.

FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hey, what's up hi how's it going man what's up boss how you doing i'm okay you uh you know i'm probably in the same state everybody else is just chilling at home chilling at home and terrified i'm just being careful super Super cautious. Yeah, yeah. It gets scary because anything you do, you get home and you're like, oh, fuck. What the fuck did I just do? You go outside for one second, some asshole walks by and you're like, oh, god damn it.

Well, you know what it is? I got like my quarantine team, like the people I'm used to being around, you know, my wife, sister, kids, those people. I'm comfortable with them. But when someone else enters our zone, I feel like they're an alien. I'm like, I don't know you. I don't know what you've been breathing, what pussy you've been eating. I don't know what you've been doing.

Yeah, exactly. I put my mask on. Yeah, I mean, like I've been going yeah so you're not going to store or nothing i try i try to send my wife as much as possible she knows she's much younger than me she doesn't mind wearing the mask and doing the whole thing i i try to make essential runs you know yeah i do a lot of i do a lot of drive-thrus at the uh you know fast foods and stuff i do a lot of that stuff but i'm not really trying to catch it be honest um i've had enough people i know close to me die and you know her my my uh coco's father just got out of the hospital

after a month bout with it and Oh, my God. Yeah. He was a non-masker. He's a guy that rides Harleys, shoots guns, and wouldn't put on a mask. And it got him and put him on his back. And now he has probably, well, he has to be on oxygen now indefinitely. It damaged his lungs to where his lungs won't operate. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question.

Let me ask you a question about a guy like that in the sense that, like, now, does a guy like that, is he too proud to realize he was fucking stupid? And is he going to, like, because I see these cats who, you know, they're against the mask. They say it's a scam. It ain't real. It ain't real. It ain't this. Then they get it.

And then all of a sudden they just shut up where there's a teachable moment there where they can say, you know, I fucked up. This is real. You know, he totally changed in the hospital. That'll do it. Right. You see God. He totally changed. He told everybody to wear a mask.

He admitted he made a big, huge mistake because when he caught it not only did he catch it his son caught it and his two sisters caught it and uh i talked to the i talked to the uh nurses in the hospital he was in and they were like you know sooner or later they figured out who he was you know because we we definitely went in there and tried to make you know at this point when people are getting close to die you're trying to get every bit of juice you can. So I'm like, you know, this is my father in law. Next thing you know, he's on the news. I'm like, all right, well, now you're a priority patient.

You don't they're not going to want to let you die. Right. Right. So I'm just trying to save his life. And the nurse, she told me, she said, everybody in everybody in here 90 of these people are non-believers until they're here so she said most of the people catching it are catching it just from negligence no kidding and you and you wonder you know is that going to change their entire political point of view or just that the the one thing around this thing you know well i mean i i don't really know you know all i know is that it is a life-changing

sure situation you know anytime you say hey this can't happen to me and it happens to you you got to be a real idiot to kind of try to keep riding it out you know so yeah there's some worth there were three days in they were calling us with that next to ken call like we want to make sure that we could put him on the ventilator if we need to right and coco was crying and it was it was it was pretty much like he was gonna die and um he lost uh he lost like 40 pounds he's now real frail and this was like a big big husky dude you know like but that's why i don't have a problem speaking on it because people look at me they go ice t you a tough guy this that and the third and i'm like yeah but this ain't nothing you could be tough against right you know your gangster can't help you with this you know what i'm saying yeah one dude wrote me he said well

dude you said like you said you terrified you sound scared i said well dude i'm scared of your your your contaminated breath that's what i'm afraid of okay so you want to call me scared because i can't whoop that ass. I don't I don't. This is my point with Ice-T. I live through so much shit. Yeah. I can't let this thing kill me. You know, all I got to do is stay in the house and beware. And one of my boys, he had just came back from the penitentiary.

He did 26 years named Spike. So I'm talking to him i'm like dude how you doing on quarantine he goes quarantine ice i was in the hole for two years yeah in the hole he said i got my wife here i got netflix i got you i'm mad you gotta get some perspective yeah he doesn't have to go anywhere he knows how to not go anywhere exactly he says you better sit your ass down so i i i take i take heed well i think also it's this thing about being healthy or not being healthy is i don't think anybody really knows what they're made of inside genetically or whatever you could be healthy as shit and if

your blood's a little fucked up or you got a little something in your heart, you don't know what this virus is going to hook up to and kill you, how it's going to do it. You might not know you have any type of genetic testing thing. My friend Scarface, who's

a singer from Ghetto Boys, he's healthy. It took him down. He said, I felt like i had 300 pound weights on my chest and i coughed so much it felt like i was coughing razor blades oh my god and uh it destroyed his kidney he's on dialysis now oh my god younger cat he's in he's like you know late 40s 50s a dude on law and order that I work with daily died right out the gate. He was 45 years old. Dominican cat.

You know, people are just stupid. I think more people will start masking as more people know somebody personally. Exactly. Yeah. Every no one's going to be untouched by this thing. They're going to know a guy whose dad or his brother or his uncle or their grandfather whatever everyone's gonna know somebody that went down it's terrible you know what i tell people and people ask me because you know i've been trying to been the voice of reason for so

many years i tell people like this where no matter what no matter your conspiracy theories, your 5G, where it came from, who made it, why it's here, mind control, new world order, all that. Illuminati. Illuminati. The virus itself is real. Okay, now, I don't care where it came from. I don't care all that. But the virus itself is real so fuck around with it if you want to right but it's and and i say we'll have years to figure out where it

came from is it is it uh uh fachi and bill gates conspiracy to sell us I don't, does that matter? Look, I'm going to go, I'm going to go no on that one. No, I don't care. My, my thing is I was in the military, right?

Yeah. People start shooting. The first thing you do is you take cover. Then you figure out where they're shooting from. Right. So right now we're in a take cover moment. You know, and also like speaking of that before, well, there's a couple of things. I love the new album's great. figure out where they're shooting from right so right now we're in a take cover moment you know and also like speaking of that before well there's a couple of things i like the new album's great

i like i like the record i like that song uh uh point the finger right thank you i mean because it's interesting to listen to the the nature of how you present issues has evolved and and you know even when you're talking angry, there's a little more balance and maturity in it. Do you know what I mean? Even on the song, like, you know, When I'm Gone, it seems like an angry song, but you're basically saying,

love me now while I'm here. Yeah. That happened after I watched Nipsey die. Another young L.A. rapper who actually basically kind of lived my life. He went to the same high school I went to. He came from the same neighborhood, you know, and he's the new generation. And when he died, they sold out the Staples Center in two hours for his memorial service.

Yeah. I'm like, but would he sold it out two hours for a concert live no so why what what are y'all doing like why do you have to die for everybody to show up for you you know and yeah yeah you know and and amy lee came in on that song and killed it. I had no idea how Vince got Amy to do that song. My bass player had to connect. And he goes, look who I got on this song. I'm like, that's not the Evanescence chick. And he's like, yeah.

I'm like, oh. And she killed it. Yeah, it sounded great. She said she had went through somebody passing too early in her world. Yeah. And so, you know, even though we're two different people, we're both singing from the heart in that song, and that's why it makes it work.

Yeah. You know, it's got a lot of weight to it in terms of the rhythm and the nature of just, you know, metal in general. But there's a lot of heart and and and sensitivity to the lyrics themselves it's beautiful it's difficult to do sincere songs when you're not sincere right you know so if something happens to you like one of your boys dies or something you know i could write a heavy song about this virus right now because i've been through it you know but that's where they say some of the best art comes from pain so well yeah

that's uh that's yeah that's the idea and then you get people that are like well maybe i don't got enough pain in my life and then they start to hurt themselves and then you know you got to be talented too yeah i haven't gone down that road like i'm trying to self-inflict hey no no you don't need to here's i got a funny story for you because i actually we never met but i told a story about you on conan o'brien i'm a comedian you know so i did i did i was on conan back in uh de December of 97. All right. And the story was I was in Barcelona, Spain on a honeymoon. And at some point, must have been earlier that year. And we went to the aquarium, me and this woman. And you were at the aquarium in Barcelona, Spain with one of the kids and a wife.

And you were just looking at the fish. Right. Does this make sense? Do you remember doing that? It makes absolute sense. So I'm walking behind you because you're reading off the information cards and you're reacting to what's in the tank, and I was like, we got to follow this guy

because this is the best tour I've ever been on. And you know what, though? When you travel. I was probably on tour. Yeah, I've never gone to any foreign country just to hang out. Yeah, I've always gone because I was on tour or something. And if you don't take advantage of that trip and go see some sights, you know what I'm saying? You lose your mind.

So I was in, I'll tell you another funny story. I was in Ireland. I love Ireland. Love it. You like it? It was cool. See, I like every place I go because every place I go, I got a fan base. Right.

So I go from the hotel to people that love me. I got a fan base. So I go from the hotel to people that love me. So I go right from the hotel to a group of people that can't wait to see me. I'm always going to love people like, oh, well, it's fucked up there. I'm like, I'm not even there long enough to know. I'm just there for the love and then I'm out. I'm out.

So we went to a zoo. Yeah. And a fucking gorilla almost tried to kill me, right? Like, we were, me and Ernie C were looking at this gorilla, and it was a big plexiglass thing. Yeah. And the gorilla was maybe, say, 40 feet away. And the gorilla took one look at me. I might have been the first black person it saw.

And it beat its chest, and it came, and it rushed, and it tried to hit the glass. Bam! I'm like, oh, my God, that glass wasn't there. That gorilla would have just killed me. it saw and it beat its chest and it came and it rushed and it tried to hit the glass. Bam. I'm like, oh, my God, that glass wasn't it. That gorilla would just kill me. So I almost died by gorilla in Ireland. There's definitely not a lot of black people in Ireland that I noticed. Yeah.

Well, you know what? I mean, everywhere you go, everybody, you know, you're not there long enough to understand the politics. You're not there long enough to understand the bad stuff. Sure. And I never go to other countries and speak on their particular politics. Yeah, that's a sucker move to talk about them and then get on a plane and leave. So I relay it to our politics and they usually can find the parallels of what's going on in their country well that's that's smart because like yeah as soon as you just even if you make a a comment because you observe something without

really knowing much about it because you're an american you're they're gonna they're gonna drag you through the press because you're the american that came in and made a comment i did not know how serious the ira was i didn't i heard of it so i'm over there and i make a comment about the ira and a guy goes don't say that ice don't say that you can't say that they'll arrest you like the ira is the terrorist like situation like he goes you don't know who the ira is it could be me it could be the guy next to you i'm like let me just shut the fuck up before i don't even you know like you say i'm not as educated about it another another place we went we went to spain yeah and do you know what the basque country is yeah yeah sure yeah that's a whole different type of people up there san sebastian it has that whole region the basque

region yeah so we did a we booked a show and we didn't know we booked it with them and we got off the airport and these dudes were like covered up and these dudes were like you know okay looking around and stuff we jumped in the in the truck we're on some off-road shit and we end up out in the woods and stuff like that and they're like i'm like so where's the promoter they're like oh he got arrested last week i'm like yo who are you who are you guys and so we get on the stage it's like this big tent guys and so we get on the stage it's like this big tent yeah we're playing and they go don't say spain i'm like well i'm in spain no you're not in spain right wow oh shit like so i've been i've been in some interesting events yeah yeah and you don't and you don't know what you're getting into sometimes till you get there no one's briefing you it's not like you travel with a with a uh an advisor you know they're gonna give you the layout of the politics of the place

yeah yeah you're going behind the lines and stuff but they treated us good too we had a good time and like then they dropped us off about a block away from the airport said okay you're on your own make a run for it it's funny because i just i was going through my shit i was i'm trying to set up my office and i actually found a copy of that uh that iceberg swim book the pimp book and i gave it to i lent it to somebody now i was thinking about it and i was looking i was reading up on on your stuff and i it's you know that book i i don't remember when i bought it they had reissued the book. But why did that book have such an impact on you and some other rappers, the Iceberg Slim?

Well, I actually named myself after Iceberg Slim. The ice part of Ice-T comes from Iceberg. When I was in high school, the coolest kids in the school were reading Iceberg Slims and Donald Gowen's books. Yeah. Those crime novels right and they used to carry them in their pockets in the back of their 501g jeans a paperback could fit right in that pocket and it's almost part of their dress code they would wear the i'm so i'm watching what what are these books these players are carrying yeah so I got into it I don't know it's like to read an iceberg slim book is almost like reading music because of the lingo right if anyone's ever read it the way they talk and the way it flowed it wasn't like reading a normal

novel it had so much and then me being in the hood knowing about the cadillacs the pimps and the players and the hustlers i'm right you know back in jersey where i was in la at the time oh okay so you're reading this dude he's talking about a captain named abel took us to the table an hour was spent over cream de ment you know i ate hummingbird hearts and other rare parts i'm like who talks like this hearts and other rare parts. I'm like, whose talk's like this? You know what I'm saying? I'm like, this guy is the coolest motherfucker. But the thing about Iceberg's

slim books, to me, is he didn't just show the glamour of the game, he showed the pain. He was a drug addict, he was on heroin. And I initially wanted to live that life you know i wanted to be a pimp i wanted to be in the streets hustling but then one day i had an epiphany and i'm like but wait a minute

this dude's a writer right like he's not just living the life he wrote wrote it. So if I want to really, if I'm like modeling my life after this guy, I can't just live the game. I have to document the game. And that's where my rap career took off because I didn't feel I could write books. Ice-T records are more like iceberg slim novels than hip hop music. Like it's not about dancing. It's not about, it's all about me breaking the game down or breaking the life down. So when I was in high school, I would go to school quoting Iceberg Slim and the girls would say, my name's Tracy. So I, that being a girl's name in the hood, you know, when you in a hood named Tracy, they go, that's a bitch name. So now you're in a fight with a dude you just met. So they used to call me Trey, crazy, crazy Trey. And then that turned into, say some more of that iceberg stuff, T.

Yeah. Turned into iced tea. So iced tea has nothing to do with the drink. It means iceberg tea. Right. Well, that's a really interesting idea that, you know, to know the difference at that age that, you know, what is because I think that's at the core of a lot of stuff that that's happened is that you were savvy enough or sensitive enough to know like, well, he lived the is the way he puts things together his ideas his expression right he lived that life but most of the time you don't survive that life right so if you're just going to live the life because this guy made it look so damn good you know the chances of you

dying without saying nothing are high but but to know that you know what he really did was he was an artist that's what he that's what he did the separation we actually did a um a documentary on him um an icy documentary we did on iceberg slam portrait of a pimp portrait of a pimp yeah so if you watch that if you if you have any interest in watch it you're gonna find out his wife wrote the books. Oh, really? His wife wrote the books because he had got out of the game and he would come home and tell these mad stories about pimping and stuff. And his wife was like, that's outrageous.

And so she got a pen out and he would just tell her the stories and she penned most of the books. So it's very amazing. You know, it's the documentary is deep. Did she do the rhyming? No, no. He actually has an album out. OK, where Henry Rollins re-released it and he's's actually rhyming over tracks on it. It's like rap. It's rap. He's saying all the, they call him Hustler Toast.

And then Dolomite was sort of a rap guy too, in a way. I met Dolomite. I met Blowfly. Yeah. You know? I met, I was fortunate enough to meet Red Fox. You see, when I grew up my parents had these these laugh records party records party records yeah with roy and skillet uh on them and it was always some woman

with her titties out on the front cover yeah and it was the wildest you know rowdy talking yeah that you had ever heard so when we came and I started doing rap and I was a little profane, people were like, oh, you're just the word. I'm like, no, this is part of my culture. I grew up listening to this type of shit. So, you know, what I did wasn't anything new, maybe new to you. Oh, that's interesting. So you were like when you got criticized for being dirty at the

beginning you're like have you listened to uh red foxes you gotta wash your ass because that was the beginning of it can i tell a red fox story yeah please uh i was with red fox the night before he died no shit um we were we were both on the arsenio hall. Uh-huh. And the first time I ever met Redd Foxx, I was a super huge fan of him. And so he goes out there in the Arsenio Hall show, and Arsenio says, Redd, you have one of the most blue shows in Vegas. And he said, but you've never been bleeped on television. How's that? And Redd Foxx says, because I know what I'm playing. and he said but you've never been bleeped on television how's that and red fox says because

i know that what what what i'm playing i know the audience i'm playing to if i'm in vegas i know what to do if i'm on television i know what to do and by the way who them hoes in the green room and i was in the green room and all the ladies were like, I was like, Red Fox, man, the master. I was like, yo. That's so funny because you like, but you were a big fan from when you were a kid. It's exciting when you meet people that you love when you're a kid, when you're grown up, you know, you get that opportunity. Yeah, well, you know, that whole Dolomite scene,

Dolomite and them created a thing where they would play those records at parties like people people would be drinking and here's these people on the records talking to my father and them would have those parties and those records be playing signified monkey jumped up and you know it's like it's just part of my history you know sure but initially because i was listening to like it's very interesting to me that you didn't get into your first music really in terms of what you liked was the metal music well the first music i was really heavily indoctrinated with uh what happened was i hadn't started rapping yet but i lived i my mother father passed early and i moved to los angeles to live with my aunt and my aunt uh had a son named earl who was just graduated out of high school he thought he was jimmy

hendrix my cousin all right he would walk around the house playing air guitar couldn't play a fucking instrument had scarves tied around his knees and stuff and he kept the radio station tuned to klos and kmet right i couldn't touch the radio station because i was like 15 years old so what happens is you start to learn metal or rock right because i tell people if you work at a jamaican restaurant you may not know reggae but by a weekend you'll be able to pick out the songs you like yeah and then before you know it you know so before I know it I'm listening to Traffic, Mock the Hoople, Jay Giles Band, Edgar Winter, Boston, ELO um and I started to like the heavier stuff like uh Blue oyster cult yeah of course black sabbath you know deep purple

so i'm like so now i go out and i bought the first black sabbath album yeah you know yeah and uh i would play it over and over and over again and people say well that's the invention of heavy metal, would be Sabbath. Yeah. So I was right there. And I knew a lot about it. Now I'm going to high school with kids. You're listening to James Brown, Parliament, BT Express, Brass Construction, all those kinds of groups. Yeah. But I know rock. Right. right then funkadelic had lead guitars

put it together yeah so i was a little bit advanced on it and stuff and when i finally got a chance to do my first rap album the title cut was ryan pays and i use war pigs as the hook. Yeah. And, you know, and also even earlier in the song, You Don't Quit, I had guitar hits. You know, so I understood that it meshed if it was done right. Yeah. When I did Body Count, people were like, oh, you're just jumping on this bandwagon of rock.

I'm like, no, I've been a rock fan for years. You know, we could do rock trivia. I'll probably beat it's but it's also interesting that first body count record i don't know i can't i don't know what year that was oh 1992 but it was like that was like there was a the the spirit of like rap gangster rap you know and and heavy metal and punk rock like the stuff that maybe rollins was doing black flag and then rollins bands it all kind of goes together in the kind of fuck you mode of you know we're you know we got something to say and you guys are full of shit absolutely and see when we would go we were body count was created because when we went on tour with public enemy the kids would mosh off of the hardcore faster rap like you know so we're in europe and mosh pits jumped

off yeah and i'm like fuck that i can make a rock band right now you know because once you've played in front of a mosh pit you always want to play in front of mosh pits nothing like it it's the ultimate crowd experience you know circle pits mosh pits so i came home and uh i had a couple of friends ernie c who they actually played on my first album but they were kind of like without a country because at the time rock people were wearing spandex oh right that was a tough time yeah especially for some kids from the hood yeah the only group that was really kind of breaking that was anthrax right you know and suicidal and like you say some of the punk bands in new york hardcore were not wearing it but we were like how the fuck do we fit in so i said

well look we'll use the speed of slayer we'll use you know the the impending doom of black sabbath and we'll use the punk sensibilities of suicidal and we'll sing about our shit we won't sing about the devil or or dragons or shit like that the metal guys are singing about you know i i always said if you took a a young white kid he said draw something hardcore in your notebook yeah they probably draw skulls right yeah a black kid will draw 357 aimed at your fucking face right right so i said we'll take the metal dark energy and you take it right from the street like it it's all right there. Hell is right outside your door. It's in the parking lot.

Motherfucker. You ain't gotta end up going off. No flying off some fucking where was his fucking castles and shit. No, it's right here. You know? Yeah. And,

um, that was what body count was based on and been on for 30 years. I've got, uh, that body count CD with the cop killer written on there still. I got one of those. We thought that was okay. People like, oh, you were trying to cross these.

I was like, no, because I'm listening to Black Flag. Yeah. Black Flag got a T-shirt with a pistol in a cop's mouth that says, make me come, faggot. Like, what the fuck? I mean, like, there's groups called millions of dead cops yeah you know punk band but i'm gonna tell you this i think the problem with body count was what and i always say this is when black people can exchange their rage to white people, that's a problem.

You know, like right now, you're watching all these protests, and it's not all black people. It's white people out there. People don't want that. They want to be able to say, oh, it's just the Jewish people mad. Oh, it's just the white people mad. But when they see unity in anger,

that's scary. That's scary as fuck. To the power structure. Oh, come on. When grandma's out there on the front line, what, you're going to shoot her with a rubber bullet? They do. Yeah.

And people are outraged, and they're seeing this. Yeah. So when I was able to yell cop killer and get thousands and millions of white kids to say it, they were like, we got to shut this dude down this is a problem right here and went all the way to the fucking president like it was you know what's amazing to me is that you read the story around that record and dan quayle and the police unions and everything else you know and the boycott of warner brothers pending is that

that was a big deal that didn't happen anyway you know now it happens every other fucking day with this asshole but when it happened with you it was like a global fucking crisis almost dude you don't even know i was at my house and uh i updated the guys were playing techno bowl uh video games yeah and uh one of my homies yelled, yo Iceman, they on television. The president is on television talking about you. So we changed the channel

and it was Dan Quayle. And he's got this, this, this, this. And he said, and Ice T. And everybody in the room, all the dudes were like, oh, shit. Oh, yeah. With a real president, people don't know what it's like to have a real president, not somebody

who tweets all the time, but a real one. Say your name in anger. Right. It's not a normal thing like for George Bush to come out and say, blah, blah. You're like, yeah because the minute the minute the president says your name the most serious background check of your life happens yeah the the the NSA the CIA DEA FBI all of them because the second question from the president could be what do we know about him yeah it can't be like he makes rap records you know they want to know your social security number

your shoe size all your friends they he he wants a dossier on you like who the fuck this is the new problem and when that happens to you you feel it you know i got tax audited twice that year i had uh actual people come to the school and talk to my daughter and ask her you know was i connected to paramilitary like they wanted to see if i was really a threat like is the guy that makes cop killer planning anything and i'm like i'm making a record you got ice cream trucks parked in front of your house in the middle of the winter like what's going on and eventually they realized i just made a record i this is not a political agenda a movement it was just a song about someone who snapped really under these same situations we're going through now what if

somebody just got so fed up with police brutality that he went after him but that's it but that's the interesting thing going back to what you realize about iceberg swim is that you know you created a character to document to document a reality which is the the freedom you have under the first amendment to create art and to say what you want to say. But because you're black and because of systemic racism, they're going to try to make an example out of you, the song, and it becomes a big political effort and it reveals the actual problem.

They manifested exactly what you were talking about and why you were talking about it look i i learned i learned a lesson from that um and i'm on another album i addressed it i called it freedom of speech watch what you say that's what i love that fucking record man i listen to that a lot. The Iceberg Freedom of Speech record. The one with Jello Biafra at the beginning. And what that means is we, Mark, you got the right to say whatever you want. Right. But you have to be prepared for the ramifications.

Always. If I come out and I said something that would be considered anti-gay, which I never say, but if I did, I got to be prepared for the gay movement to attack. If I come out and say something anti-Semitic, I have to be prepared to be attacked. So you have the right to say anything. Right. But you also got to be prepared for the ramifications. Like, you can't go to your wife and say,

yeah, maybe I just fucked your sister. Free speech. You know what I'm saying? It's bad. Yeah, yeah. ram if it like you can't go to your wife and say yeah maybe i just fucked your sister free speech you know it's like yeah yeah so i had to learn that i had to learn that what i do say i have the right to say it but people also have the right to get angry well yeah but yeah but but isn't that different i mean i i understand that too because you know i do comedy i got friends who get themselves into trouble and and this idea that their censorship is not is not fundamentally true because of what you said. You can say whatever you want. You might have to answer for it. But but the problem with the cop killer was that that was the feds coming down.

So, you know, that's the government basically implying that you don't have the right to say this because you're starting shit and we're going to take you down. And that is different because that's right. That's the fucking government being, you know, we're going to shut this fucker down. Well, they're gangsters. They're gangsters. What they'll do is they'll make it difficult for you. They'll make it uncomfortable for everyone around you. They won't legally be able.

They couldn't legally put me in jail, but they'll, they'll do stuff like what happened during the whole thing. Like cops wouldn't want to do security. We had to get insurance for different shows. We couldn't get insurance. People just, they made us, they vilified us and made us taboo to deal with, right? If you're going to deal with them, then we're not going to deal with you. So they played it all the way out. And people always say, hey, controversy is a way to be successful. I'm like, not really.

Controversy might get you known, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to take that to the bank and it's going to be a big thing. It can ruin you for the rest of your fucking life. Yeah. You could either be like, Oh, that guy's amazing. You're like that asshole could go either way. Yeah. So my advice is always, you know, if you're gonna, Ice Cube asked me one time, he said, uh, Ice, you got any advice? Did he say like that? Did it rhyme like that? Something like that.

We've been friends forever and I just said, only say shit you can back up. If you're going to say something, back it up. If you're going to call a woman a bitch and they come back at you, explain why she's a bitch.

I'm not talking about your mother. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about you, bitch. she's a bitch like now i'm not talking about your mother i'm not talking about you i'm talking about you bitch you are a bitch and then break it down in other words don't say stuff you're gonna have to back up off of yeah i've always been very calculated with my opinions and my points and i never wanted to say something that i was going to have to go back and apologize for. I try to think before I speak and I'm, I'm sure I've made mistakes, but isn't there a song on this record where you're like, I'm not going to apologize for anything, which were no remorse.

Oh yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That that's a song about somebody who's just been pushed to the fucking limit. And now it's time for them to take revenge and there is no remorse

because you've pushed me to this point where it's going to be the best day of my life taking out revenge on you you know and i'm very into revenge people that say they're not into revenge have never got it they don't know that great feeling oh my god it's wonderful i don't i don't believe in harping on it they let people oh well it takes part of your soul and yeah i'm like no i'm not sitting around lingering thinking about revenge like that but if it becomes an opportunity right if it arises yeah i'm gonna take it yeah yeah you don't want to you don't want to hurt someone too much, but enough to know that they got hurt a little. Yeah. So now when you think about what's going on now generationally, like, you know, the Point the Finger song on the new record speaks directly to blaming the dominating paradigm sort of minimizes the voices of minorities in general. So when you see what's happening now, like you just said, you're seeing these protests that are multi-ethnic, multi-age, multi-class.

Do you feel that something has changed all of a sudden? Do you feel that something has changed all of a sudden? Because, like, in my recollection, when your generation was coming up and you guys were fighting the good fight, it was usually in reaction to the same shit that was going on now. And then, like, it was different, too, in the sense that there were really fucking profound, horrible riots in Los Angeles. But, like, these kids now, they weren't alive for that. Do you feel like this is a they weren't alive for that do you feel like they're

that this is a wake-up call for this generation well i think i think let's let's start let's start with this is another generation this is not even the millennials these are like disease these kids are even younger and i went out into some of the uh uprisings or riots. I was actually in Arizona in a restaurant. And they're like, the riot is coming. Like, you know, you hear the people coming and the people inside the restaurant start to panic. And I'm like, I'm going outside. I want to see what's going on. It was all kids.

All, like, young kids, 18 to 25 white kids yeah they were out there doing civil disobedience breaking up shit wiling guys were out there talking to chicks it's a lot of wildness that was going on but i think that right now these kids are growing up. All right, let's look at it like this. I think Obama had everybody relaxed. Obama as a president made us all feel everything's cool. You know, oh, yo, by the way, yo, we just got a bin Laden. It's all good. And everybody just kind of like relaxed. good chill and and everybody just kind of like relaxed and that whole generation just was not really into protesting it was just like it looks like our commander-in-chief has us together now

there'll be people to say well the world was falling apart but for the masses it was seemed peaceful well they and also they thought that they that some problems had been solved. Right. Right. Yeah. Trump gets in and he's like panic, like everyone panic, you know, build a wall. We're all going to die. This, that and the third. And now this generation is growing up in this, you know, four years. It is. They're like, what the fuck? You know, this is from 18 to 22. They're watching this. I think that right now what we're going through is another civil rights movement. My father marched in the civil rights movements in the 60s. Civil rights is racism, sexism. It's all the different civil rights. People have to address it. The cops, we have to address all these different things. And I'm so happy to see

the kids really going out there, making some moves. You're going to, from these movements, you got new leaders that come out, you know, young girls, young guys that have become the next generation of leaders. So activism is great. Activism is good. Now people got to me, oh, well, riots and da, da, da, da, da. I'm like, look, a riot is a tantrum and it's a flashpoint and shit happens during a riot. The best way to stop a riot is never let it get started. You know, now people like, oh, well, you're agreeing with people breaking shit. I'll say, let me break it down. Let me give you this analogy. Your wife walks into you and

says she has a problem you're playing video games yeah she's telling you about police brutality yeah she comes back in another time hey baby let me talk to you about this you know what i'm saying yeah i'm too busy about the fourth time she throws her fucking shoe through your TV set. That's a riot. That's a riot. It's like we tried to take a knee. We're going to burn up some shit. We're going to cause chaos to get attention. Ain't nobody rioting now. That shit's over.

You know, no looting. But that's a flashpoint of a riot. Don't let riots happen. And, and like it just seems to me like and what do i know but it does seem to me that because of this president because of the sort of shameless you know prideful engagement with racists and creating division that you know even people of my generation, I think, are finally waking up and seeing the reality of systemic racism. I don't think they ever really saw it before, even the progressive people. The thing about, dude, see, like I tell people, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not

a Republican. I believe both wings are on the same bird. I just look at people in general and make a decision on, is this a good person? Is this guy trying to look out for us? I don't get into all that left-wing, right-wing shit. I don't know. I'm probably liberal on some things. I don't know what I am. I just try to be honest to myself. See, people don't understand racism. When you start saying, oh, we got to build a wall and the Mexicans are the problem, that's racism. You can't just lump a whole country into anything like that. And you can't really do blacks right now, so let's do Mexicans. And you're triggering the same people. You're triggering all these people uh chris rock said it best he says that our presidency is

like a pendulum and it swings from one side so it went from bush you know over to to clinton right who's smoking weed then it goes from clinton to son of a bush yeah right back over this way then it goes from bush back to obama yeah and then it went from obama now it's swung this way to fucking uh uh trump yeah so he said the only place left for it to swing is jesus you know it's like and and when and because you have a two-party system, when one party wins, the other party festers and hates and just waits for their chance. And, I mean, I don't know, man. In a way, we're in our worst time. But I feel like this is a chance for the America, the United States of America, to reset and get their shit together for the

next hundred years. I hope so. Yeah. Let's get this dialogue going and let's make some changes for the better. Because I believe I'm not totally pessimistic. I know too many great people. I know too many good people. So you can't tell me everybody's a piece of shit.

No, for sure. Now, when you were like when Trump was just, you know, a fucking clown, did you ever meet him or do a show with him or anything? Well, see, Trump is a very opportunist dude. Like he'll hang out with you if it's it's it's it leverages. So the closest thing I ever came to Trump, I met. I walked by him once at the indianapolis 500 i don't know if i touched him or shook his hand he just passed by me he goes there's donald trump

i i'm not fascinated with wealthy people i've met really wealthy people in my life so i'm like he ain't my friend i you know i'd much rather meet quincy jones you know somebody i i just i just never had a real connect to trump but hip-hop we always thought trump was a baller you know we like trump get trump you know there's even a rapper named tone trump like trump was a term for making money right you know right before we realized what kind of underlying asshole he was yeah and um one time we roasted him uh yeah to the roast of of donald trump a comedy central thing yeah yeah and he was there and i was with coco and you know coco she loves taking pictures with celebrities and i go there go trump and i go uh you don't try to

take a picture with trump and she goes you want a picture with trump i'm like nah she goes i'm good i'm good so you know it's like you ain't really no celebrity dude like why are we even taking pictures with i know but there's something about that dude it ain't right because i was on that same i think it was the same episode i told the story about you, you know, seeing you at the aquarium on Conan. Trump was the guest before me. Right. And Frank, the guy who was the producer over at Conan, when I used to do that show all the time and Trump was in the dressing room, he said to me, said, you want to meet Trump? And I had the same reaction you did. I was like, I don't think so. I don't want to meet him why yeah because like why

why do i want to meet him that's like you know you're like all right they told you a guy was a major developer in miami you built a bunch of hotels and his name was joseph johnson yeah you want to meet him no so the only reason you would want to meet him is if you held him in celebrity, like you felt he was some body. And I was like, you know, and the more I got to watch him, like one of my friends, I don't want to mention their name. Yeah. But his father was on The Apprentice. Oh, yeah. And he got off the first round.

And I asked him, I said, why did you get off the show? He said, basically, that show is watch your heroes kiss Donald Trump's ass. And he said, I'm not going to do it. And I'm like, well, right on. But he said once he got there, he realized that's what it was. It was like all these people, Herschel Walker, all these greats that we admired. Yeah, it's his ass. And he's like like i'm not doing that i'm already i'm a billionaire too yeah that's a good way to read that that's a good way to see that yeah so the cover of uh ace of spades is great did you know lemmy yeah i worked with lemmy i did um a song

called born to raise hell with lemmy uh And, you know, I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of these metal gods, you know, whether it's Lemmy or Henry Rollins or Slayer or, you know, Lamb of God, all these different cats. And I respect them and the fact that they're like, yo, I'm gonna fuck with Ice-T. That meant a lot to me, you know,

because real artists don't just really collab with people. It's very difficult. Like, Dave Mustaine did a solo on one of our records. Dave doesn't do that. I don't even think Slayer has more than two collabs with anybody. So when I got a chance to work with Lemmy, it was an honor. And he was just mad cool.

He was mad. He was, he's his original, you know, like if you say, well, Ice is the original gangster, that's fucking Motorhead. He's the original Lemmy, you know? And I had a good time with him. And on the Body Count records, we try to do tributes to the groups that influenced us.

So, you know, on manslaughter, we covered suicidal. Bloodlust, we covered Slayer. So I said, let's cover Motorhead. And people are like, where was Motorhead influenced? I'm like, Cop Killer. You know, those open... Cop Killer sounds like you're on a Harley driving down the freeway. Cop Killer doesn't sound like Slayer. Cop Killer is more Motorhead. Yeah. You know, so we're like any other band. We take influences. I was just reading the other day that Metallica, Kirk Hammett said, well, I took a lick from an Ice-T Power album to start the solo on Enter the Sandman.

No shit. Yeah, but it wasn't even my lick. It was a lick I had sampled from Heart. From Heart? Yeah, Magic Man. From Magic Man? He heard that. I have a song called Take It Personal.

And I just sampled that. And then if you listen to Into the Sandman, when it goes, that's how the guitar starts. So he says, I heard it on Ice's album, I like his term, he said, I gotta snake that. But all of us, all musicians are influenced

by other musicians. I know comedians too, it's like you see something, you're like, man, I gotta figure out how to do something with that energy or that, that, that shit is just dope to me. So if it's done right, you know, people won't ever figure it out. Only the, only the artist knows, you know, I took that inspiration from sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was done wrong. People are like, you ripped them off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you got,

you got to figure out like what it is about what's inspiring in you and what do you you know how do you put your feelings around it right exactly so like but it's so weird you know when i listen to i just re-listened to some of your earlier the rap records and it's like everything was it's amazing how stripped down it was man you know like like the evolution of hip hop. I mean, now the layers, the possibilities of beats, the possibilities of tracks. It's like it's a completely different universe, man.

I mean, when you were doing it, you had like one or two samples, a drum, and then you. And that was it. Right. What do you like? The rapper is the main instrument, you know? And I got that stripped down style from Rick Rubin. Right.

You know, I would listen to Beastie Boy records. I was listening to LL Cool J records. Right. And, you know, like LL's early record, I Need a Beat, an insurmountable beat subject of discussion. You're motivated with the aid. It's like the beat is just there. The vocalist is the machine. It's all about the vocalist. It's kind of like a beat is playing and a sax player is soloing over it. That's what a

rapper is. It's not about, I'm not Celine Dion where i need all the music around me and i sing in the midst of it new hip-hop is really production driven it's a lot more beat right and tracks are so immense and so intense you really don't care what they're saying it's now it's it's it's it's beat and it's sonically driven like i play my records in a club and then they'll play a new record in a club. And I'm like, God damn. Like the, it's just so big. And it just fucking vibrates. It's, it's technology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of amazing that the depth of sound that happens now,

like in just the, but you don't't but on the other side of it when you listen to your stuff or older stuff in general you don't need all that shit to get the message across you know two different vibes if you listen to early metal yeah then oh it's really thin some of it yeah yeah and you know you listen to our new stuff it's so big and it's mixed so differently. Like Will Putney mixes the body count albums for stadiums and like you listen to it and it's like, damn, my whole car just felt. Yeah, that crunch. Yeah. Heavy. So, you know, it's just evolution. It's why not? You know what I mean? If if that's what you know, because like people get desensitized to, you know, like now you go back to the old stuff and you can be nostalgic about it and enjoy it. But if you're into the new stuff, you want something that's going to beat your brains in.

You know, you want you want the full body experience. One of the things I think about the old stuff, it was so experimental, like the 808 drum kick. experimental. Like the 808 drum kick, the bass that everybody uses now that's now synthesized out this big. Yeah. Just a distorted drum that wasn't supposed to be played like that. Right. And we went into the studio and we were always like, let's do something different. Like I remember the first time I sent my voice to a Lexicon space station, which is a drum, I remember the first time I sent my voice to a Lexicon space station, which is a drum effects module. And they're like, well, that's for drums.

I'm like, put my voice through it. So you got a bunch of rap kids showing up in a studio full of lights. We wanted to use all the lights. We were like, what is that? And that's where all the sampling started to come through, the echoes, the reverbs. I'm not going to let BC boys say, VUs in the red, or it may sound thin.

So they were like, pin the VUs. And the engineers were like, no. And I was like, fuck that. We want to do that. Matter of fact, take the tape out, put the tape backwards, and I'm going to wrap over the tape backwards. And then you get Paul Re revere going yeah yeah so that creativity part of hip-hop early hip-hop we got you know i i like i really appreciate that because i was like man people were in there trying to figure it out yeah right because you're actual innovators you like, let's use that for this. You're not supposed to, but let's do it anyways.

And now everything, you just got a guy going like, yeah, I can do that. Let me just push this. Okay, we're good. Go. You know, like you guys. They can do it on their phone. Exactly.

But you guys were creating the language of it, you know, that they just integrate it into a button there's some people that are going to look at the the first shelby cobra and think that's the greatest car and it's some people that want that new pagani or that new bugatti no matter what no matter what so there is respect for the originators of this stuff and there's always going to be love for the newest model that's out so ain't no hate there it's just what it is yeah and how about like so how like are you guys going back to uh law and order you don't know law and order is in an interesting zone what

happened with law and order was we were uh filming and they came into my trailer and said, we're not, we're done. We're pulling the plug. I had a scene to do that day. That was in March. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I was supposed to shoot that day too. The day they canceled. Yeah. So I was like, the hell is going on. And then we had a show in New York that got canceled. Then we had a show in LA that got canceled canceled then we had a show in um LA that got canceled because carnivore just came out right and then we had 40 shows in Europe all got canceled uh no I'm

fucking unemployed right now that was the moment I really realized you make money in front of people like your money is not you know you got some residuals coming in but your real bank is being in front of people yeah yeah i was like wow you got to go to work it was a wake up call yeah well and um because usually if i can't do law and order i could do body count i got two jobs right both of them dead so um from what i understand right now they want to come back uh september october right i mean what they're trying to do is create a a safe work environment yeah of course nbc universal all them they have a lot of liability yeah if they bring us back and somebody gets sick and then we say hey you put me in an unsafe work environment, that could be a mass lawsuit.

They're trying to cover their selves. And I totally understand that. I think we're going to move into the world of the waiver. Oh, yeah. Go in a restaurant. You're going to sign a waiver. When you go to the gym, you're going to sign a waiver. I chartered a jet to get from New Jersey to Arizona. I don't usually fly private, but I needed to get out here. And I was like, okay, come on, come on, you know, come up off with some of that bread. I stopped being a cheapskate, but we chartered and we had to sign waivers that said, if we were to catch COVID, we couldn't try to take, you know, come after the aircraft. Right.

So I think that when I go back to work, you're going to have to sign waivers. A lot of them. You still like doing it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good bunch of people. It's fun to go to work. Mariska is wonderful.

your people? It's fun to go to work. Mariska is wonderful. When you're on a show 22 years, it just runs like a machine. Everybody appreciates everybody. Everyone is keeping everybody employed. Everyone is, you know, when I'm not on the screen, Mariska is. I love Mariska. I told Mariska, I said, Mariska, I love my wife. I love my daughter, but I've made more money with you, Mariska. So I don't mind it. And also, as I'm getting older, it's good not to have to be on the road fucking 10 months out of the year. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I can now, it allows you to have a house, go to work every day. It's a job.

Yeah. And I like that. I like the stability of it, yes. Are you friends with Belzer? Man, Belzer and me are like best friends. How's he doing? Where's he, in France? He's in and out of France.

Last time I heard from him, he was in Vegas. But that is something. Belzer's a motherfucker. Like, I heard from him he was in Vegas. But that is something. Belzer's a motherfucker. I don't know what... When I got on the show, they're like, the rapper, he'll be the problem. Belzer's smoking weed. Belzer is drinking

wine. Belzer is cursing motherfuckers out. I'm like, I'm the least problem. Belzer is crazy. And me and him became close because we really quickly realized that both of us were nightclub performers right so neither of us like early calls yeah neither of us you know and i asked belzer he says ice you know what i look for in a script like what he goes days off i love that guy i haven't seen him in years i used to see him over at the comedy store he's driving around in that big eldorado he had i mean i got so many belzer told me wild stories

about miles davis about i mean he he mean he's basically been around all the greats his comedy is unique I've seen him live yeah he's just a character one of a kind I know yeah he was the guy in the shootout

yeah yeah no he's a great guy but he's doing okay I hope so I hope so. I hope so. Now I'm going to have to check on him since you brought his name up. Yeah, please do because I don't think I got a number for him. Yeah, Belzer's like a sweet guy, and he's the whole history of modern comedy in that guy. Yeah.

And he really seemed to learn how to enjoy his life, which is nice. Belzer was, I mean, working with him for all those years, I didn't ever know when it was a joke. I didn't know what the fuck was coming. I remember one time he came into work, he goes, Ice, put your dick on the table. I want to show you something right quick. What the fuck are you talking about?

But you almost did it right like yo dude like i had to learn i had to learn i learned so much about comedy like that i'm like oh that's a that's a joke where the setup is a joke it was great talking to you buddy hey thanks for having me uh hopefully the people and your listeners uh don't hate my guts and fuck with me but uh yeah you know no one's gonna hate you there's no reason to hate you that the new record's good and you got a lot of respect everybody loves you ice that's what's up well thanks mark thanks for having me yeah man take alright peace Ice-T and me what a great talk what a great guy you can get

Body Counts Carnivore wherever you buy or listen to music and the single from 2017 that he re-released is called No Lives Matter

that's a round two so now I'll play some guitar I guess right that's what we do here Thank you. Boomer lives. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

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