Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption--From South Central to Hollywood by Ice-T; Douglas Century

Author:Ice-T; Douglas Century
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Rap musicians, Cultural Heritage, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians, Biography
ISBN: 9780345523280
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2011-04-19T03:44:15+00:00

I WOULDN’T EXACTLY SAY I was bored with the rap game, but by 1989, I wanted to expand my musical horizons. My love for rock didn’t start with my band, Body Count. My introduction to rock started when I was living in my aunt’s house back in the mid-seventies.

My first cousin, Earl, had already graduated from Dorsey High, but he was hanging around, thinking he was Jimi Hendrix. He was one of the few rocked-out black guys I’d met; he wore a scarf around his head and only listened to KMET and KLOS in L.A.—the two rock stations. For a while, when I first came to live with my aunt, I had to share a bedroom with him. I was just a kid in junior high, so Earl controlled the radio in the room, playing nonstop classic rock.

I didn’t hang with Earl, but just being around him, sharing that bedroom radio, I started to pick out the songs I liked. I had no taste for rock before Cousin Earl. He had his well-worn Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath albums; and from listening to the radio I learned about Leon Russell, Mott the Hoople, Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple. All the heavy rock bands of that era. If you’re saturated with a certain type of music long enough, you’ll start to pick out the artists you like. If you worked in an area full of Jamaicans, you’re going to listen to reggae so much that eventually you’re going to say, “You know, I like that song by Peter Tosh.”

So right at the age when my musical taste was forming, thanks to Cousin Earl, I was saturated with the bigger, heavier stuff: Edgar Winter, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath were my favorites. It was kind of cool to know about that shit. Not too many black kids my age knew about the great rock guitarists.

There was one other black rock head at Crenshaw High. Ernie Cunnigan from South Central. We all called him Ernie C. Ernie was a dedicated guitar player. He was a real different dude. In the midst of the whole gang culture at Crenshaw—everyone wearing the same uniform of pressed khakis, Chuck Taylors, flying blue rags—Ernie C. would walk around with a Fender guitar strapped over his shoulder like he was constantly on his way to a gig. He did this one concert at Crenshaw, right there in the multipurpose room—crazy! He had flash pots he’d made at home; he was rolling around on the stage, playing Peter Frampton songs lick for lick. The audience was all gangbangers, standing around watching him, these Crips who didn’t know shit about rock music. But they all respected Ernie C. because of his showmanship and his sheer balls.

Vic Wilson, also known as Beatmaster V, could play the drums, but he got caught up in the drug game more and more until he and Sean E. Sean caught that case for the twenty-six pounds in their crib down in Inglewood.

When I first got my deal with Sire Records, anybody with any musical aptitude gravitated toward me.

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