Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap

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

He was born in Newark, New Jersey and moved to district Crenshaw, Los Angeles, California when he was in the 7th grade. After graduating from high school he served in the United States Army for four years. He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays. The next year, he founded the record label Rhyme Syndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow Hip-Hop artists called the Rhyme Syndicate) and released another album, Power.

He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced in his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster. Body Count released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track “Cop Killer”, which was perceived to glamorize killing police officers. In the following year, pressure upon Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. Records, to censor or hold back any music or form of content that was deemed too dangerous for public consumption—including Ice-T’s next Hip-Hop album, Home Invasion which was supposed to be released early in 1993 and was under scrutiny for its album cover artwork—ultimately prompted a severance of the relationship between them and Ice-T. Home Invasion was released later in the Fall of 1993 directly on his Rhyme Syndicate label through a new distribution deal with Priority Records instead. Body Count’s next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s.

As an actor, he is best known for his portrayal of NYPD Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the NBC police drama in which he has appeared since 2000. —wikipedia