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Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American rapper and actor. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and moved to the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles when he was in the 8th grade. Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow's music career started with the band of the singing group, The Precious Few of Crenshaw High School. Tracy and his group opened the show, dancing to a live band. The singers were Thomas Barnes, Ronald Robinson, and Lapekas Mayfield.
After graduating from high school, he served in the United States Army for four years. He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays, the first hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker. The next year, he founded the record label Rhyme Syndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the Rhyme Syndicate) and released another album, Power.
He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced in his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster. Body Count released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", which was perceived to glamorize killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow, son of Solomon and Alice Marrow, in Newark, New Jersey. As a child, his family moved to upscale Summit, New Jersey. Solomon was an African American, and Alice was Creole. For decades, Solomon worked as a conveyor belt mechanic at the Rapistan Conveyor Company. The first time race played a major part in Tracy's life was at the age of 7, when he became aware of the racism leveled by his white friends toward children, and that he escaped similar treatment because they thought that Marrow was white because of his lighter skin. Relating this incident to his mother, she told him "Honey, people are stupid"; her advice and this incident taught Marrow to control the way the negativity of others affected him.
His mother died of a heart attack when Tracy was in third grade. Solomon raised Tracy while he was a single father for four years, with help from a housekeeper. Tracy's first experience with an illegal activity occurred after a bicycle that Solomon "bought" him for Christmas was stolen. After Tracy told his father, Solomon shrugged, "Well, then, you ain't got no bike." Tracy stole parts from bicycles and assembled "three or four weird-looking, brightly painted bikes" from the parts; his father either did not notice, or never acknowledged this. When Tracy was 12 years old, Solomon died of a heart attack. For many years, AllMusic.com has stated that his parents "died in an auto accident", but Ice-T has stated that it was actually he who had been in a brutal auto accident and that was decades later.
Following his father's death, Tracy lived with a nearby aunt briefly, and was sent to live with his other aunt and her husband in View Park-Windsor Hills, a middle-class black neighborhood by South Los Angeles. While his cousin Earl was preparing to leave for college, Tracy shared a room with him. Earl was a fan of rock music and listened to only the local rock stations; sharing a room with him spurred Tracy's interest in heavy metal music.
After leaving the Army, Marrow wanted to stay away from gang life and violence and instead make a name for himself as a disc jockey. As a tribute to Iceberg Slim, Marrow adopted the stage name Ice-T. While performing as a DJ at parties, he received more attention as a rapper, which led Marrow to pursue a career as a rapper. After breaking up with his girlfriend Caitlin Boyd, he returned to a life of crime and robbed jewelry stores with his high school friends. Marrow's raps later described how he and his friends pretended to be customers to gain access before smashing the display glass with baby sledgehammers.
One of Marrow's friends, Sean E. Sean, was arrested for possession of not only cannabis, which Sean sold, but also material stolen by Marrow. Sean took the blame and served two years in prison. Marrow stated that he owed a gratitude to Sean because his prison time allowed Marrow to pursue a career as a rapper. Concurrently, Marrow wound up in a car accident and was hospitalized as a John Doe because he did not carry any form of identification due to his criminal activities. After being discharged from the hospital, he decided to abandon the criminal lifestyle and pursue a professional career rapping. Two weeks after being released from the hospital, he won an open mic competition judged by Kurtis Blow.
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