Ice-T Explains Why He Hasn't Dropped a Solo Album in Years: "The Music Got Goofy to Me."

[Mac Ten]

Ice-T was making more money doing Law and Order episodes anyways...

Who wanted to see Ice-T snap his fingers in a XXXXL White tee, sing autotune, or rap about thuggin and bussin his hammers.?

Rap is a young man's sport. Like a football player, there is a limited amount of time for your career and eventually the money runs out so u have to branch out into other avenues.


Luckily, Ice-T was getting movie scripts way early in his career which lead to one of his biggest roles in New Jack City. That movie was getting aired every other week on BET so I know that he was caking off those royalties.

 

[Deltron]

Rap is a young man's sport. Like a football player, there is a limited amount of time for your career and eventually the money runs out so u have to branch out into other avenues.

This narrative gotta stop. It's been proven older acts can thrive. Nas, Jay, Griselda, Ross, etc. have fanbases

Drake, Nicki, Weezy are reaching their 40's (if they're not there already)...so they supposed to stop?

 

[Barney Rubble]

This narrative gotta stop. It's been proven older acts can thrive. Nas, Jay, Griselda, Ross, etc. have fanbases

Drake, Nicki, Weezy are reaching their 40's (if they're not there already)...so they supposed to stop?

There are so many sub genres in hiphop now and the listeners are aging with the artists. I'm personally heavily anticipating the LL and Q-Tip album and the De La with Prince Paul album. If Slick Rick ever announces a new album, I'm coppin that shyt day one. Hopefully one day we'll see some of our legends with actual hit songs that the youth are fukking with.

 

[King Poetic]

ICE will always be a legend

But by the end of the 90s he was done musically.. but made a good transition into acting and been Cakin those law and order checks for the last 20 plus years

 

[hex]

Rap is a young man's sport.

If you look at the top streaming rappers for 2022, Drake, Future, Kanye, Eminem, J Cole, and Kendrick (all pushing 40, or older) are right there with NBA Young Boy and Rod Wave.

Even "young" rappers in the top 20 like Kodak and Durk are 25-30.

The average rapper's age is like 35 now, "rap is a young man's sport" ain't been true since the early 90's when damn near every rapper out was 18-23. If you

compare rappers age now to back then 90% of these cats would be considered off age alone.

Fred.

 

[hex]

This is just a thing in Hip Hop.

Only in this culture, do our legends feel out of place once they've cooled off for a little while. That's the problem with the genre. We should always be open to hearing new sh*t from our icons. None of them should feel like the music has left them behind. There should never be a "time" for art. But with Hip Hop, we always give our people a limited amount of time to create and drop their art. Meanwhile, legends in other genres can tour forever and drop new music 40-50 years into their careers, and still be successful. Hip Hop needs to get its sh*t together.

It wasn't a problem for Gen X. New rappers in the 90's like Outkast and Mobb Deep were doing collabos with older artists like Slick Rick and Rakim.

This only became an issue over time because Millennials and Gen Z didn't create their own genre like Gen X did with hip-hop.

Rap was never supposed to last this long. If you look at every other genre from around the same time frame....disco, punk rock, heavy metal, etc....rap is the only one still thriving in 2023. Everything else either died off completely or fell way into the back ground.

Fred.

 

[Deltron]

It wasn't a problem for Gen X. New rappers in the 90's like Outkast and Mobb Deep were doing collabos with older artists like Slick Rick and Rakim.

This only became an issue over time because Millennials and Gen Z didn't create their own genre like Gen X did with hip-hop.

Rap was never supposed to last this long. If you look at every other genre from around the same time frame....disco, punk rock, heavy metal, etc....rap is the only one still thriving in 2023. Everything else either died off completely or fell way into the back ground.

Fred.

But dissing rappers for their age was a thing before millennials and gen z.

Em dissing Everlast, benzino for their age...Jim Jones, game dissing Jay for his age, etc

 

[hex]

But dissing rappers for their age was a thing before millennials and gen z.

Em dissing Everlast, benzino for their age...Jim Jones, game dissing Jay for his age, etc

Because rap actually was a young man's game back then. 35-40 was considered old.

Now, half the rappers in the top 20 from 2022 are 35-40. Only a handful are what would actually be considered young.

Fred.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

It can’t be rap has gotten too soft but we also wanna preach stop the violence.

Because when being “hard” is discussed, why do you care what another man is wearing or looking like? If we talking street shyt, it’s NEVER stopped and now the people rapping are putting in more work than previous generations

 

[hex]

If we talking street shyt, it’s NEVER stopped and now the people rapping are putting in more work than previous generations

Not really. It just seems that way because the bar to rap is so low. And I don't even mean skill-wise.

Back in the day you had to have some kinda local buzz, maybe do talent shows, hope to attract the attention of an A&R....if not that, go to a convention like Jack The Rapper and hand your demo off to somebody in the industry....cut a single, hope it catches on so the label green lights an album budget....

Now anybody can rap and put out a video. A guy can wake up, never rapped a day in his life, shoot a video on his Iphone in his backyard, diss other local rappers, go viral, get shot and die 2 months later and people say "rap is too violent these days!"

Dude was never a rapper. Not really. He was just a guy that rapped. Most of these street/drill rappers The Coli props up never have any kind of impact in the grand scheme of things.

Fred.

 

[Ed MOTHERFUCKING G]

This is just a thing in Hip Hop.

Only in this culture, do our legends feel out of place once they've cooled off for a little while. That's the problem with the genre. We should always be open to hearing new sh*t from our icons. None of them should feel like the music has left them behind. There should never be a "time" for art. But with Hip Hop, we always give our people a limited amount of time to create and drop their art. Meanwhile, legends in other genres can tour forever and drop new music 40-50 years into their careers, and still be successful. Hip Hop needs to get its sh*t together.

Hip hop legends tour right now, you're not even right.

What 17 year old in America is out here playing pearl jam or Metallica new music? Let alone the beach boys or CCR. Those are legacy acts, just like Kane and rakim and them

 

[Ziggiy]

This is just a thing in Hip Hop.

Only in this culture, do our legends feel out of place once they've cooled off for a little while. That's the problem with the genre. We should always be open to hearing new sh*t from our icons. None of them should feel like the music has left them behind. There should never be a "time" for art. But with Hip Hop, we always give our people a limited amount of time to create and drop their art. Meanwhile, legends in other genres can tour forever and drop new music 40-50 years into their careers, and still be successful. Hip Hop needs to get its sh*t together.

Ice T can still tour forever thats why he’s got The Art Of Rap tour.

Nas, Jay, Wu-Tang, Common, LL, The Roots, Snoop Dogg are all proving that elder statesmen can tour successfully and remain in demand. Nas just sold out MSG at the age of 49 and is about to run it back with Wu-Tang on the NY State Of Mind tour because last year’s tour was so successful.

Hip Hop has thankfully grown to the point that there’s truly something for everything. I think most new-school rap is absolute GARBAGE and I couldn’t name half the rappers that the “streets” supposedly fukk with. But guess what? Thanks to streaming and curated playlists I NEVER have to hear anything I don’t want to hear. I haven’t listened to a radio station in damn near ten years. My ears don’t have to be infected with Ice Spice, Kash Doll, Future, or whoever the hell the Drill rap artist of the week is. Great music is literally at the tip of our fingers

 

[Awesome Wells]

This narrative gotta stop. It's been proven older acts can thrive. Nas, Jay, Griselda, Ross, etc. have fanbases

Drake, Nicki, Weezy are reaching their 40's (if they're not there already)...so they supposed to stop?

This here.

The whole narrative that it's "a young man's sport" is wack. The best music these days, is being made by the older artists. And you have legends that thrived when they were younger in the 80's and 90's, who are scared to make albums today because they don’t think anyone will listen, and they're actually doper than the younger artists out today.

Hip Hop is the only genre that tells its artists they have to quit when they get older. No matter how dope you are, you're being told that you're "too old" to be here. So we have legends that just pop up every now and then to perform 30+ year old songs because they're being told there's no room for them to do new sh*t. It's the dumbest sh*t ever.

 

[Why-Fi]

i get it

 

[zayk35]

It was a joy to see him perform at the Grammy awards. You could tell he was/is a very seasoned live performer his snippet along with most of the other legendary artists was fire. I'd go to an Ice T show today.