Biography of Ice-T

Los Angeles-based rapper and ex-con Ice-T was one of the first to establish the West Coast as a rival to the East Coast posses. Along the way he's become one of the genre's most intelligent (albeit sometimes sexist) gangsta-rap advocates. Things turned sour for Ice-T in '93. The ongoing controversy over "Cop Killer," a song taken from Ice-T's metal band's self-titled debut album Body Count, finally resulted in Ice-T initially getting the song removed from the album, and ultimately leaving Warner Bros. While both sides claimed it was an amicable and mutual decision, there was widespread doubt it was a voluntary move. The much anticipated and awaited Home Invasion also proved a disappointment. Ice-T rebounded a bit in '94, at least in the eyes of the hip-hop faithful, with his book The Ice Opinon. Rhino also issued an anthology of early Ice-T material, The Classic Collection. Later in the year, Body Count released its second album, Born Dead; it didn't equal the first album in either sales or controversy. ~ John Floyd

Biography of Ice

The darker visions of industrial-strength trip-hop plus death-metal raging equals the intense dub-hop of Ice. A side-project-of-sorts formed around Godflesh's Justin K. Broadrick and God's Kevin Martin (the same lineup comprising Techno Animal), Ice formed in the early '90s with additional bandmembers Dave Cochrane and Alex Buess. The quartet released Under the Skin, their debut LP, in 1993. Broadrick and Martin both kept quite busy with other work -- for Techno Animal, Final, Godflesh, God, and others -- and released only the 1995 remix EP Quarantine. Finally, in 1998, Ice returned with their second album, Bad Blood, and new drummer Lou Ciccotelli, plus collaborators like Sebastian Laws and Scott Harding of New Kingdom, Blixa Bargeld, DJ Vadim, and El-P from Company Flow. ~ John Bush