Body
Count
by Jon Wiederhorn photos by Mark Madeo
Ice-T stands with legs spread and hands against
the wall. It's a position he knows all too well from his
days in the 'hood. But this time is different. There's
nobody patting him down for drugs or weapons.
There's no flashing cherries. This time ice is in full
command, standing with a grin on his mugshot
face and felt-tipped pen in his right fist, admiring
the graffiti he's just administered to the dressing
room wall of the 9:30 Club in Washington DC.
"Yo! Body Count 187 All Cops" reads the inscrip-
tion. Body Count is, of course, Ice-T and guitarist
Emie C's metal band-a lethal, blitz speed outfit that bru
talizes with the velocity of Motörhead and the precision of
Black Sabbath. "187" means kill, and you know the rest.
It's no secret that Ice-T bears no great respect for any
man with a badge. He was the first rapper to chant "Fuck
the police" in concert, and now that NWA has borrowed his
slogan as their own, Ice-T has taken things a step further.
Since his days as a gang leader, lce has strived to be the
most intense, most outrageous. Body Count is just that.
The band's eponymous debut opens with a dialogue
between Ice-T and a member of the LAPD called "Smoked
Pork." At the end, loe pumps three bullets into the officer
and Body Count's In The House" begins with fervor. Stil
the most powerful song on the disc is "Cop Killer," a hard-
core thrashtest which doubles gun volleys over pummeling
drum beats. It's about a street hood who has grown so fed-
up with police brutality that he goes on a cop killing ram-
page. Originally, Body Count wanted to call the album Cop
Killer, but Wamer Brothers refused to release it. So they
changed the title, but left the cover art, a gangster with
"Cop Killer tattooed on his chest.
"The funny thing about it is when you say cop killer' it
scares people," says loe. "If I said 'postman killer or
teacher killer, no one has no problem with that. You see,
to me personally, a cop ain't shit. He's just another man,
and I don't understand why he has a gun and how he can
make me lie down in the street.
"There are some cool cops. But the cops that fuck with
people because they're black or they got long hair, or what-
ever-that's the ultimate sin. You're given a badge by law
to help people, but yet you use it to help your fucking ego
out. Them motherfuckers should be killed," he says.
"I remember when I used to be a hoodlum," loe contin-
ues, "I would take kids that wanted to be down and I would
say, if you was in an alley and a cop had you cornered
and if you killed him you'd get away. Would you shoot him,
or would you let him arrest you?" And the kid would always
say, "Aw, man, it's the police. I'd just go to jail' And I'd say,
You wouldn't do a cop, but you'd kill your buddy over five
dollars. You's a punk, so you shouldn't get in this game."
Essentially, Ice is still the same cold, calculated gangsta
he was when he cruised the streets with an Uzi and an atti
tude. Only now, the drive-by shootings and turf battes
have tumed to graphic audio simulations and gold records.
Yet unlike many of his contemporaries, lce refuses to glam-
orize gang violence. What he deals with is the raw reality
of the ghetto, and his songs rarely have happy endings.
1 jet through the fast lane but always drop you on death
row," he says. "You never hear me say shit like I got away.
or the gangs is a great thing to do. That's fake. Anybody
who's been there knows that there ain't nothing lovely on
the blood-soaked fast track. That invincible shit don't work.
If you been there, you can't rap or sing about it like that.
Your heart won't let you do it
As savage as "Cop Killer" is, the remaining ten songs on
Body Count are no less eviscerating "KKK Bitch" is a bull-
dozing, speedcore number which sees lce engaging in sex
with the daughter of the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
while daddy watches. "There Goes the Neighborhood"
looks at black heavy metal through the eyes of a racist
white boy. And "Mamma's Gotta Die Tonight delivers a
physical and emotional pounding while telling of a black
son whose mother hates white people.
Body Count is basically another Ice-T album. It's just
done with loud guitars. The lyrical content is basically the
same. If anything, Body Count is metal from a rap perspec-
tive," says loe
The thing about rock and roll," adds guitarist Emie C, "is
it's not cool for black kids to listen to . It's not their kind of
music. So, maybe Ice doing it, maybe he'll make it cool and
accepted. That would be a great thing for everyone."
Ice-T first discovered loud guitar music as a teenager in
South Central LA. "I would visit my cousin, and he was a
drug addict. He would lay in the room like he thought he
was Jimi Hendrix, but he couldn't play no guitars. He would
lay there high, and he wouldn't let me turn off the rock sta-
tions. So I was forced to listen, and after a while, I got used
to it. And then I got to like it. Black Sabbath, Mott The
Hoople, I really got into those motherfuckers."
Emie was leaming about rock and roll at the same time
"A while friend of mine handed me a tape one day and
said, "isten to this. I listened but didn't understand it
because it was so different from the black music I was
used to," says Emie. "But I kept on listening, and after a
748
while I understood how it works."
Soon after, someone told Emie he played guitar like
Jimmy Page but he had never heard of the Led Zeppelin
guitarist. I figured, I ought to know his stuff," Emie says.
"So I went out and bought every Zep thing I could find. I
grew to love it. Most black kids don't get that opportunity,
so they can't relate to any of it
When Ice and Emie finally ran into each other in high
school, they soon became fast friends. They've remained
so ever since, even when Ice was in prison. Unlike the rest
of the band, Erie never spent any time behind bars
because he never got involved in gang activity "I always
considered myself a musician first," he says, "so when they
used to go do their little crime thing, I'd be like, "I got to
practice guitar."
Through the years, Emie tried to work with various metal
bands, but no one took him seriously. When he auditioned
for other peoples' bands, he was rejected because he
didn't have the right look. Basicaly, he wasn't white.
Then in 1989, Ice, who already had a string of successful
rap albums, forwarded Ernie the money to cut a demo
while Ice went off to shoot New Jack City. When he
retumed, he listened to Emie's tape and was blown away.
"I said, 'Shit, let's form us a motherfucking band," he says.
So the two recruited fellow high school miscreants and
ex-gang members, D-Roc (mythm guitar), Mooseman
(bass), and Beatmaster V (drums), who had all worked on
Ice's rap albums, and Body Count was bom
ME
These gangbangers turned headbangers were immedi
ately banned from playing the Sunset Strip because of
"Cop Killer. Determined to continue, they embarked on a
tour with DRI, and soon received thumbs-up from such
metal legends as Slash and Duff, Dave Mustaine, and Kirk
Hammett. Many rap fans were first acquainted with Body
Count through the "On With the Body Count" track on Ice-
Ts Original Gangsta album. But it was their performance
at Lollapalooza that really served as an introduction to
alternative rock and metal fans.
We had only been together about six months," recalls
Ice. "Body Count wasn't even booked for that tour. It was
just loe-T. But I had fifty minutes, so I said, 'Fuck it, let's try
and get the band out there.' Perry Farrell and them didn't
know I had a group. They didn't give a fuck. They were
like, "You got fifty minutes.' So I decided to do thirty min
utes of Ice-T and twenty minutes of Body Count
Realizing the enormous crossover audience Body Count
could attract, Warner Brothers snatched up the band, fully
aware of the potential volatility of the project. "We're det-
nitely boling up the ultimate brew of headbangers and rap
kids, Ice-T stresses, "that's what makes it so evil and so
dope. It's nitro. Somebody got to mix it up. When everyone
realizes we all hate the same motherfuckers, watch out.
That's what they are afraid of. That's why they want to stop
us. But there ain't nothing they can do. They shoulda killed
me last year. I'm at the point where if they gonna do ary-
thing, they definitely gonna have to shoot me."
52 THAR MAGAZINE