We were recently lucky enough to have an extensive chat with Ice T, one of the most well-respected men in the entire music and entertainment industry. His work in the rap game and in television and film has brought him a certain level of success but don't have him mistaken -- he's still a product of the streets. Ice T may have forayed into the world of reality television with his wife Coco Austin but he's still hard as hell. Given his respect for the streets, we just had to ask him about how rappers' lyrics are being used against them when they go to trial. People like Tay-K and (most recently) 6ix9ine have found themselves explaining their artistic decisions and Ice T had something to say about that.
The legendary rapper says that younger artists need to be more careful about what they're speaking about in their records.
"You don’t wanna dry snitch on yourself. That’s when keeping it real goes wrong," he starts.
"Some of them [rappers] are dumb. They’re like testifying on their records, they’re saying exactly what they did," he continues. "Like they went and shot somebody. They make a song play-for-play what they did, I’m like yo! Are you fucking kidding me? You gotta wake up at some point! I mean, we saw what happened with Tekashi. He went out here, he wanted to challenge the streets, and now you’re looking at life sentences and you’re ratting and all kinds of bullshit. You gotta deal very delicately with the streets. I respect the streets. I always want to put out music where people say 'That’s real, that’s official, but Ice didn’t say too much and he kept it 100.'"