We don’t know it yet—but the United States is about to get obliterated by Belgium during the 2026 FIFA World Cup quarterfinals. With the game on in the background, Ice-T posts up inside his swanky, West Hollywood hotel room following an afternoon recording B-Real’s podcast, Dr. Greenthumb. His son, Lil Ice, bounces back and forth between the balcony and another room as Ice-T’s business partner, Courtney “Big Court” Richardson, kicks back on the couch.
Ice-T catches a commercial for the new FOX series Nation’s Dumbest, which he stars in alongside Steve-O, JoJo Siwa, Dr. Drew, and Anthony Michael Hall, among others, before rattling off some of the things he was asked.
“What’s IMO stand for?” I tell him, “In my opinion.”
“What about TTYL? I didn’t know that one.”
I say, “That’s short for talk to you later.”
“What about who is the oldest Kardashian?” I say, “Kourtney.”
He quips, “Should I know that? OK, fuck that [laughs].”
The topic quickly turns to The OG Network, a media hub he launched with Big Court, and his new website, Icet.com. It will be the only place to cop his forthcoming double album and first solo effort in 20 years, Criminal Migraine.
“Fuck streaming services,” he says confidently. “I’ve been telling you how much I hate streaming and how I think that was the biggest rip-off in the history of music…”
Ice-T pauses and shouts to Lil Ice, “Hey, you guys, I can hear you!”
He resumes his thought without missing a beat. “The record labels sold us out. Once upon a time, the record label had to press a record, make the CD, ship it, go to the record store and collect the money. They just sold us out and said, ‘Fuck it, Spotify, give us whatever, and we’ll take a big cut.’ And the artists just got fucked.
“When me and Chuck D did record deals back in the day, we owned our own merch, our own publishing, and our own shows. The record label got money from selling the record, now they want money from selling my shirts and whatever else.”
He reminds me of one of his favorite sayings, “I never met a pimp that could break down a penny,” the harsh reality of how much streaming services actually pay per spin.
Ice-T and Chuck D at the New York premiere of Ice-T’s directorial debut film ‘Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap’ in 2012. Bennett Raglin/WireImage
“They figured out how to break a penny down,” he continues. “Couldn’t they just give us a penny? It takes 1,200 streams to be equivalent to one sale. 1,200 people have to listen to it for it to count. We’ve lost the entire record-buying experience to the digital download. I’m going to put my liner notes on my website.”
After nearly 40 years as a recording artist and one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, Ice-T has earned the hard-won wisdom that comes with experience. He knows there’s no money in streaming for him, but he says, “If I sell 10,000 records for $10 a pop, there’s money to be made. I believe fans want to give their artists the equivalent of a good Starbucks drink, you know?”
It all started during the pandemic. Together with Treach, Ice-T invested in a New Jersey-based studio and began working on a project called Black Cadillac. He rapped as Coupe DeVille, and the Naughty By Nature OG went by Mackie Jackson. “We were both intergalactic pimps,” he explains. It was the song “Lay Low” that gave him the rhyming bug again. Plus, seeing Big Daddy Kane announce another record and Clipse release Let God Sort ‘Em Out signaled the timing was right.
“That inspires people from my generation,” he says. “I don’t believe artists ever stop being artists. I think they can lose passion. You can go through a period when Rembrandt might not want to paint, but then he picks up the brush again and regains his passion.
“Hip-Hop went from what I did into ringtone rap, then into Auto-tune rap, then into trap, then drill and mumble rap. Some people from my era made the mistake of trying to do those forms of rap, which is not what you should do. You should stick to what you do.”
He reminds me of one of his favorite sayings, “I never met a pimp that could break down a penny,” the harsh reality of how much streaming services actually pay per spin.
“They figured out how to break a penny down,” he continues. “Couldn’t they just give us a penny? It takes 1,200 streams to be equivalent to one sale. 1,200 people have to listen to it for it to count. We’ve lost the entire record-buying experience to the digital download. I’m going to put my liner notes on my website.”
After nearly 40 years as a recording artist and one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, Ice-T has earned the hard-won wisdom that comes with experience. He knows there’s no money in streaming for him, but he says, “If I sell 10,000 records for $10 a pop, there’s money to be made. I believe fans want to give their artists the equivalent of a good Starbucks drink, you know?”
It all started during the pandemic. Together with Treach, Ice-T invested in a New Jersey-based studio and began working on a project called Black Cadillac. He rapped as Coupe DeVille, and the Naughty By Nature OG went by Mackie Jackson. “We were both intergalactic pimps,” he explains. It was the song “Lay Low” that gave him the rhyming bug again. Plus, seeing Big Daddy Kane announce another record and Clipse release Let God Sort ‘Em Out signaled the timing was right.
“That inspires people from my generation,” he says. “I don’t believe artists ever stop being artists. I think they can lose passion. You can go through a period when Rembrandt might not want to paint, but then he picks up the brush again and regains his passion.
“Hip-Hop went from what I did into ringtone rap, then into Auto-tune rap, then into trap, then drill and mumble rap. Some people from my era made the mistake of trying to do those forms of rap, which is not what you should do. You should stick to what you do.”
In the case of Criminal Migraine, Ice-T is rapping like it’s the Original Gangsta era all over again, this time trading bars with the likes of Treach, Freddy Foxx (Bumpy Knuckles) and Ras Kass.
Over an ominous beat, the 24-track effort begins with Ice-T explaining what prompted him to get back in the booth before he launches into “It’s What You Say,” one of many songs that find him spitting game for those willing to listen.
“You stick to the formula,” he says. “It took those other artists—and I think the first was Killer Mike with Michael. He wanted to grab you. I was like, ‘Yep. This is it.’”
The hotel phone rings—Big Court picks it up and is informed their neighbor called security for the weed smoke billowing from the balcony. “The hotel is smoke-free,” the person on the other end says. We all laugh—don’t they know it’s legal in California?
The irony is that Ice-T has a few bars about the pitfalls of snitching and how it’s changed since he was coming up. But so has his life. Not only is he a successful, Grammy Award-winning artist (Body Count is among his other musical endeavors), but he’s also an accomplished actor, having starred in 27 consecutive seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. (And if you haven’t caught his cameo in the new season of the Netflix series Survival of the Thickest, look it up). What his life looks like now, compared to the street life he led in the 1980s, is drastically different, and he still manages to stay true to his evolution on each and every song.
“You had that desperation to make it in the beginning, but now you’re so successful and have accomplished so much; is it harder to write from that place than it was when you first started?” I ask.
“It’s just a different energy,” he says. “I like that word ‘desperation,’ when you’re trying to make it. When you get to this other place, you’re still surrounded by desperation. It’s just other people. They’re looking to you for the answers. They’re like, ‘Help me get up out of here.’ Now my phone is ringing. Everybody wants help. Before I needed help. Now everybody wants help.
“I always tell people the difference between Ice-T then and Ice-T now. The old Ice-T was like, ‘I will kill everybody.’ The new Ice-T is like, ‘You know I’ll kill you, right?’ [laughs]. If you watch martial artists, the new students walk around the dojo like this [puffs out his chest], but the master walks like this [puts his arms behind his back]. At some point as a man, you walk like the master because there’s nothing left to prove.”
Much like his Twitter account, Criminal Migraine is busting at the seams with his “Ice Cold Facts,” and it’s natural to wonder if people will even appreciate the free advice he’s doling out.
“I’ve had people tell me ‘You Played Yourself’ [from his third album, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech…Just Watch What You Say] didn’t make sense until they were on the bus to prison,” he recalls. “You can make your choice now, and I’m making an effort to hopefully get you to stop what you’re doing before it’s too late.”
At 68, Ice-T is still blazing trails and showing the culture what Hip-Hop looks like more than 50 years after Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell threw their infamous “Back to School Jam” at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. He feels a sense of social responsibility to pass down what he’s learned.
“I feel it,” he says of wanting to share his experiences. “I get rewarded by people that say, ‘Hey, man, you know, that game helped me,’ so I like it. If I give you the game and you use it, I like to give it to you. If I give you the game and you reject it, I kill the game. I guess you got it.”
Belgium scores again. It’s 3-1, and the U.S. is in bad shape. “Shit,” he mutters, and we go back to talking, now about the magic of George Clinton, who is about to turn 85 on July 22, and what he’s learned from his predecessors.
“What I’ve learned from George Clinton, Ozzy Osbourne and James Brown is if you’re real, you never change who you are,” he says. “You become an older version of yourself, but you’re still the same. Hip-hop doesn’t age out. I’m rapping better. Everything is tighter. I’ve moved over 20 million records during my career. People who love Ice-T, I just want 10,000 solid fans to get on my website. Hopefully I’m creating a wave of artists that start to do their own websites and go away from streaming and don’t just get fucked. I want to activate that.”
Criminal Migraine is expected to arrive sometime in August. Keep an eye on Ice-T’s website and check out The OG Network here.
