Happy 30th Anniversary to Ice-T’s fourth studio album O.G. Original Gangster, originally released May 14, 1991.
Tracy “Ice-T” Marrow was a gangsta rapper before “gangsta rap” was a thing. By the time N.W.A essentially coined the phrase, Ice-T already had a few gold records to his name, where he dropped a whole lot of “gangsta” shit. Ice-T has admitted that he had gotten into hip-hop, at least partially, as a means to “launder” the money he received from various illicit activities that he’d participated in and his experiences gave his music an unshakable foundation in a raw reality.
Ice-T channeled this reality on albums like Rhyme Pays (1987), Power (1988), and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech…Just Watch What You Say! (1989). A little over a year-and-a-half after he released Iceberg, where he grappled with the PMRC and various other organizations looking to censor rap music, he released O.G. Original Gangster, his attempt to reclaim his throne as the Don of Gangsta Rap. Thirty years later, the album’s themes and ideas are still pertinent in our current climate, and its lyricism and musicality are timeless.
O.G. was Ice-T’s longest album at the time, coming in at a little under 73 minutes. Whereas Iceberg split subject matter between politically charged material and nasty-sex raps, Ice-T leaves sex behind this time out, and only barely touches on politics. Instead, he focuses on his thoughts as an elder statesman in the realm of hip-hop, offering his insights on street life and the experiences that shaped him.
The album’s production is provided by members of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate collective. Frequent collaborator Afrika Islam, along with DJ Aladdin, and SLEJ the Rough Edge (currently working as Shafiq Husayn) do the majority of work behind the boards, with the occasional assist from Ice-T himself, Nat the Cat, and Bilal Bashir. Together they make O.G Ice-T’s best produced album. It’s a project that’s rough, funky, and emotionally evocative when it needs to be.
O.G. might not be the peak of Ice-T’s career, but it’s an exclamation point, capping a great four-album run. It’s sprawling and ambitious, where Ice works hard to demonstrate his versatility as an artist willing to take some chances. It’s an album that he delivered during one of the biggest periods of his career, as it was released just months after his star-turn in New Jack City, which marked the formal beginning of his acting career.
On the album’s title track and the first official single from the album, Ice-T perfectly articulates his role within the hip-hop landscape at the time. As a “hardcore player from the streets, rapping ’bout hardcore topics over hardcore drum beats,” he stakes his claim as even more than gangsta rap’s godfather. The song’s second verse serves as Ice-T’s career mission statement. He describes the evolution of his musical approach, as he went from recording electro-rap party jams to vivid depictions of street reality. “I rap for brothers just like myself,” he asserts. “Dazed by the game in a quest for extreme wealth.”
The success of New Jack City and the Ice-penned theme song “New Jack Hustler” undoubtedly gave O.G. a solid boost. Even in 1991, Ice-T was no stranger to recording “theme” songs for films, including those that have nothing to do with rap or hip-hop. “Colors” was one of his biggest hits, while songs like “Dick Tracy” and “Superfly 1990” (featuring Curtis Mayfield) have largely been lost to time.
For those who may not have seen the film, Ice stars as a “new jack cop” working to take down the ruthless narcotics dealer Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes). The film uses “New Jack Hustler” early on to score a scene where Ice-T chases a wannabe stick-up kid played by Chris Rock through the streets of New York City. Its blaring horns and pulsing groove give it an unmistakable urgency, while it transforms the normally smooth piano from Bobbi Humphrey’s “Jasper County Man” into something sinister.
Incorporating tracks recorded specifically for a soundtrack on a separate album usually doesn’t work. All too often, they’re placed at the beginning or end of a side, acting as a separate statement to an otherwise complete project. Here, however, “New Jack Hustler” is perfectly integrated into the flow of the album, matching many of the themes that Ice-T addresses throughout the expanse of the album. “New Jack Hustler” is one of the greatest songs that Ice-T ever recorded and one his all-time strongest performances.
Ice excels when delving into the criminal mentality, exploring the ruthlessness required to live beyond the law. Through his lyrics, he exposes how a life without means can make this path a tragic, but logical, outcome. With “New Jack Hustler,” Ice-T slips easily into the mentality of a drug kingpin shaped by poverty and desolation. “I had nothing, and I wanted it,” he raps. “You had everything, and you flaunted it / Turned the needy into the greedy / With cocaine, my success came speedy.” He presents his lifestyle as a logical extension of the capitalist ideal, pondering, “Is this a nightmare or the American dream?”
Ice-T has always been an exceptional and multi-faceted lyricist. O.G. features some of his best pure emcee material of his career and showcases his underappreciated ability to use different rhyme styles, always matching the mood of the track.
He moves with precision on the fast-paced “Mic Contract,” stalking wack emcees while rapping over the guitar from Dyke and the Blazers’ “Runaway People.” Though the pace slows considerably on “Pulse of the Rhyme,” he raps with stern authority, weaponizing his lyrics to inflict pain on his adversaries. However, on “Mind Over Matter,” he’s almost soft-spoken, his calm tone masking the intensity of his content. The song features one of the finest pure lyrical displays of his career, as he raps, “Imma hit you with an overload of bottomless thought / Reversing all the shit you’re taught / Then throw words at you syl-la-ble-at-a-time / Your brain recites the rhyme.”
Ice-T makes use of his impeccable storytelling skills on “Midnight,” a grim tale of surviving violence on the streets of Los Angeles. Ice captures the most minute details of a harrowing brush with death. He compresses and expands the story where necessary, as the first verse takes place over the span of a minute, while his and his crew’s further attempts to escape a botched sneak attack unfold over three more verses. To convey the tale, he shouts his lyrics in a forceful bellow, which fits with the dirge-like beat, built from the wailing guitars of Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” and the thunderous drums from Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” In a twist, “Midnight” becomes a direct prequel to the hit that really started his career, “6 ‘N’ The Morning,” ending with Ice being awoken at home by cops pounding on his door.
Another impressive facet of O.G. is that even with its lengthy runtime, Ice-T handles nearly all of the rap duties himself. The sole exception is “Fly By,” where he’s joined by Rhyme Syndicate stalwarts Donald D and Nat the Cat. All three get loose, laying down some “buckwild freestyles” over some James Brown funk. While Ice-T promises to diss all doubters and rivals, Nat the Cat kicks a complex tongue-twisting rap that still makes me wonder why he never got to release a proper solo album.
O.G. can be bleak and incisive, but Ice-T measures the death and despair with some laughs. On “Bitches 2,” Ice-T gives various example of how the term “bitch” isn’t limited to one gender, all with his tongue firmly in his cheek. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous” is an amusing and unvarnished look at tour life, filled with barely controlled chaos. The song illustrates the contrast between Ice-T learning to navigate the daily grind and showing love to his fans for their years of support.
Later, Ice gives a thoughtful treatise on leaving the economically blighted areas of the inner city for a safer environment on “Escape From the Killing Fields.” He rejects that idea that being “real” means staying in the ghetto, rapping, “Do you know how dumb you sound? / That mentality’s what keeps my people down! / No one wants to live in an urban war / You live there cause your parents were poor.” He encourages Black people to strive for economic success in order to make a better life for themselves and their families.
Some of the best tracks on O.G. are where Ice keeps things brief, as in “a minute and 15 seconds or shorter” brief. Ice-T says more with less throughout the album, tackling a wide range of subjects. He tells the ill-fated story of a hustler friend on “Ed,” explores the results of vicious child abuse in “The House,” and describes the process of trying to clean the “crackle” off of a piece of vinyl on “Fried Chicken.”
Interestingly, on “Ziplock,” one of these mini-jams, Ice -T states, “I’ll never win a GRAMMY, so fuck the G.” Of course, nearly 30 years later, Ice-T would indeed win a GRAMMY. However, it wasn’t for his rapping. Instead, he won a Best Heavy Metal Performance GRAMMY for “Bum-Rush,” which he recorded as the frontman for his speed metal group Body Count.
Ice-T introduced Body Count on O.G. with a song of the same name. By all accounts, Ice-T was a longtime metalhead, and he used the group to espouse similar political and sociological philosophies as featured across his rap-based releases. He later performed with the group while on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour during the summer of 1991. I’ve never been a speed metal fan, but “Body Count” sounds like a perfectly serviceable example of the genre. Lead guitarist Ernie C., a long-time collaborator of Ice’s, powers the song with blistering solos. By the way, in between the 30-year period from releasing this song and winning a GRAMMY, Body Count started a media shitstorm that likely changed the course of hip-hop and music censorship efforts forever, owing to the controversy that surrounded their 1992 single “Cop Killer.”
O.G. ends with “The Tower,” a harrowing portrait of prison life. In an inspired choice, Ice raps over the main theme from the film Halloween, describing the real-life horrors that occur on a daily basis behind bars. It’s disturbing in its brutal realness, accurately portraying the hellish space in gritty detail.
Like Ice-T’s previous releases, O.G. was a commercial hit, certified gold. Ice-T certainly went all in with promoting O.G. to be something big. Along with the four singles he released from the album, he released a VHS tape featuring videos for all 24 tracks on the album, including the skits/interludes. Some of them are visually creative, and some just feature Ice rhyming in front of the black screen. It also features one of Ice-T’s homeboys, Ink, running stark naked through swarms of bees.
Ice-T would continue his rap career, releasing four additional solo albums over the fifteen years that followed O.G.’s release. I must admit that even though I still consider myself a huge fan, I have only ever heard his follow-up effort, Home Invasion (1993).
The Body Count and “Cop Killer” controversy cost him his deal with Warner Bros. Records, and dogged his rap career for years, while his acting career only grew in stature. These days, he’s mostly known for his twenty-year-plus stint on Law & Order: SVU. When I learned that he’d won a GRAMMY for a new Body Count album, I was admittedly unaware that Body Count was still around and Ice-T was making music of any kind. I still think he’s best remembered for albums like O.G. Original Gangster, which proved that he could always mix it up with the biggest gangstas in town.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about Ice-T here:
Power (1988) | The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… (1989)
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