Ice T has spoken out about how his controversial track, ‘Cop Killer’, nearly derailed his career.
The track was publically criticised by President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. The heat around ‘Cop Killer’ got so hot that Ice T went as far as recalling the album and re-releasing it without including the track. Although, he did release it as a free single.
“It was difficult because I’m the cop killer,” he told HipHopDX. “Everybody in the mainstream was like, ‘They won’t fuck with you because you’re too taboo.’ And I was like, ‘Right.’ And then Snoop started knocking down walls. That’s my brother. So Snoop was going through doors and I’m like, ‘Look, Snoop’s making it through these doors, let’s try.’
“So the first big one I got was the GEICO commercial with the lemonade. The advertising world was watching and there was no blowback. From there, I did RXBARs, CarShield. You see, people don’t understand but if you look at Shaq, like the one he does for The General, that could be eight to $10 million a year. The numbers aren’t bullshit. You know that bitch Flo from Progressive? Trust me, she lives in a mansion. Flo is caked out.”
He added: “It’s lucrative and these big corporations have the money. So if you’re somebody who’s kind of worked their way into Americana and people like you, they could go, ‘Oh, shit, let’s put Ice-T in a Nerf gun commercial,’ and it’s funny. They’ll pay you.”
When you have the reputation as ‘Cop Killer’, being a family-friendly face is an almost impossible task, but somehow Ice T managed to achieve it.
