I'm pretty sure I didn't know who he was when I saw his 1988 cd Power in the bin at Silver Platters. I was 14. I know for a fact I bought it because of the cover:
Not to mention the back side:
Zang! What's a 14-yr-old from Bellevue not to love? I took it home and discovered it was really fucking good. Not only was he a total gangsta (which I was fascinated by like so many other suburban white kids), but he was actually opposed to drugs (me too!). He also had a way of criticizing the futility of gang violence that made sense coming from a guy whose success relied on having lived it. Hell, he was sorta still was. But he did say in subsequent interviews that the album cover was intended to lure us in, and then he filled the inside with his anti-drug, anti-gang, pro-sex, pro-education messages, mixed in with casually-relayed, coolheaded tales of life in the ghetto. He did all this before NWA broke, btw.
I didn't have the album very long when my mom came into my room while I was listening to it, took it, and said she was going to check the album out. I'm not sure if she just sat down and read the lyrics herself, or if she handed it off to one of her guy friends that was more hip to music than she was. Regardless, I got that cd back. Ice-T: kid tested, mother approved.
Interestingly, I literally just had a conversation with my mom on Thanksgiving where she said some stuff about hip-hop being lousy music that she just couldn't understand anyone liking. "You sound like your parents," I replied. Ice-T was my Elvis.
ps: did you know Jay-Z is paying homage to Ice-T with the song 99 Problems? He fucking is.
