As long as I'm around the cats in the hip hop scene, they'll throw me a track and I'll write a rap over it.

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.

Anybody who has anybody in the armed forces, I don't care how well-trained they are, there's nothing safe about it.

I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio.

No, I'll stay Ice-T. This is what got me here, I'm always going to stay true to that. If it weren't for hip-hop I wouldn't be doing all these other things.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street.

Another thing about me dealing with the old school rappers, you see a lot of humility. When you're new, nothing is wrong. Everything is tight. Because you're trying to hype the world into believing in you.

I've lectured at Stanford, Princeton and Harvard to name a few... I just might be smarter than YOU.

There is no such thing as a normal family so don't trip off it, just deal with it.

Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you.

Ice-T in the music has done some outrageous things.

When I was in the 12th grade, I got my girlfriend pregnant. I just got out of school, she was a 10th-grader. I'm a teen parent, and I'm at a point where I'm like, 'Man I've got to do something.'

I've got a phone,

answer machine, TV set,

computer, hand grenade

-- everything you need

to run a business in

Los Angeles.

I've evolved, but I'm the same dude, I'm just in a different place. We all change, we all grow. I shouldn't be in the same place that I was 30 years ago; I should be more intelligent, you know.

My father died early. My mother died early. I started hanging with the gangs. I'm on the streets; I'm committing crimes. And the music came along, and this music just took me on a different road.

I mean rappin' to me is easy, it's something you can do over a week.

I write rhymes with addition and algebra, mental geometry.

I'm like a monkey. You don't let go of one branch until you get a hold of the other.

Redemption means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong. So I think a lot of people get hooked on drugs and when they get over that addiction they go out and they try to talk to kids and they try to work in rehab centers.

I've never read for a movie, I've always been given them.