Rapper, rocker, author, actor – Ice-T has done it all. Today, you can add one more title to the list – birthday boy.
Born Tracy Lauren Marrow on Feb. 16, 1958 in Newark, NJ, Ice-T is best known as one of the original practitioners of southern California hardcore rap (he moved to Los Angeles as a teen, after the deaths of both his parents). His debut album, 1987’s Rhyme Pays, made an immediate splash, going gold and featuring the first hardcore song Ice ever wrote, "6 'N The Mornin'."
1988 saw the release of his second album, Power, which yielded similar results. The next year, his third record, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say! took on censorship, most trenchantly with the track “Freedom of Speech.”
That track proved prescient, when in 1992 Ice-T released the self-titled debut by his metal side project Body Count. The track “Cop Killer” received condemnation nationwide from police organizations, and even from then-President George H.W. Bush.
Meanwhile, Ice-T’s acting in such films as New Jack City, Ricochet and Trespass led to a regular TV role in New York Undercover and, eventually, to his role as Fin Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – one he’s had since 2000.