Where Were You in ninety two is a production of I Heart Radio. A special note this episode features themes of violence, explicit language, descriptions of sexual acts and desires, and so many F bombs and may not be suitable for all listeners. They turned around and apt Rodney King. They were really looking for escape thought. The Fraternal Order to Police in Texas found this song and they go, oh, let's pointing him. He's the problem. And they try to, you know, deflect what's really going on, which is cops killing kids. Welcome to Where Are You In? A podcast in which I your host Jason Lafier look back at the major hits, one hit wonders, shocking news stories, and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest, most eclectic, most controversial twelve months of music effort. This week, legendary rapper Ice T drew the ire of President Bush, the SBI, the I R S, and the n r A when he and his thrash metal side project body Count released their dark, vicious track cop Killer. They've been performing the song for a year before it appeared on their debut album, but the record landed in stores just weeks before a group of police officers were acquitted and the trial for the beating of black motorist Rodney King, and riots over the verdict erupted in the streets of Los Angeles. Critics accused cop Killer of inciting violence across the country, and it became the perfect fodder for right wing politicians aiming to take down anything that challenged the idea of family values. Ice T found himself and the crosshairs of his conservative opponents and at the center of a debate over the limits of freedom of speech. In this episode, we explore the origins of cop Killer, the outrage that sparked in and how ice T reacted to the fallout, and the prospect of his career ending. Plus, Ice joins us to discuss his new book, Split Decision, which reveals his deep connection with a close friend and former crime partner who was sentenced to life in prison that very same year, March three. Rodney King, a construction worker who was on parole after serving time for robbing a convenience store of two hundred dollars, was heading home from a friend's house. He'd been drinking and smoking weed and was speeding when police attempted to pull him over. He tried out running them. He eventually stopped in Lake Few Terrorists, a suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles. Four police officers apprehended him, thinking he was high on PCP because of his sweating and his strength. During the struggle that ensued, when he lunged at one officer, the officer hit him in the head with the baton. King fell, and two officers continued hitting him as he tried to stand back up. They continued to strike him at their sergeant's direction, a total of fifty six times. At one point, a fourth officer, Theodore Barsino, who was Latino, tried to stop his three white colleagues. He did, however, stomp on King. Once King was handcuffed, one officer dragged him face down in the street. King was then taken away in an ambulance. His injuries included fractures and cuts on his face, multiple bruises, a broken cheekbone, and a broken ankle. This was long before smartphones, but as Ben Westhof rights in his two thousand sixteen book American Gangsters, a man named George Holliday recorded King's beating for nine minutes with a video camera from the balcony of his apartment he sold the tape to a local TV station for five dollars. The station sent the footage to the Los Angeles Police Department and the officers were charged with excessive force. As a documented assault aired on news outlets all over the US. It was inescapable, despite the omnipresence of the footage and the undeniably hostile beating at captured. The trials, mostly white, jerk and Semi Valley, forty miles from downtown l A was not convinced. On April twenty nine, all four officers were acquitted on their assault charges, while three were acquitted on their excessive force charges. A year later, the officers would go before a jury in a federal trial and two of them would be found guilty, with both serving thirty months in prison. L A p D Police Chief Daryl Gates took some heat for the incident. He responded by announcing his retirement. That was hardly the consolation confused and incent citizens needed after that original verdict. For some of them, nothing would alleviate the pain and the rage they felt. If they couldn't get justice, they wanted to revenge. The Los Angeles riots began on a Korean owned deli when five black men attempted to steal bottles of whiskey and then attacked the owner's son when he tried to stop them. They threw the bottles at the door, shattering it, with one man yelling this is for Rodney King before they ran off. Police officers weren't able to touch them, but did arrest another man who was swinging a baseball bat at a car with two white men inside it. Elsewhere, a crowd chucked rocks at officers who'd arrested a teenage boy. They were treated for fear of their safety. Riders began pulling white people from their vehicles and assaulting them. One man, Reginald Denny, was hit with a hammer, a brick, and an oxygen tank and suffered brain damage. Other riders swarmed l a p D headquarters, curling trash cans at it and burning a parking kiosk, while others targeted the Los Angeles Times office. Protesters launched molotov cocktails into the air. Businesses, including gun stores, were looted, some were severely damaged, buildings caught on fire. You could hear hip hop group n W A song Fucked the Police blaring from car stereos, a fitting soundtrack to the unleashed fury, devastation and chaos US. The National Guard, the Marines, and the U. S Army were called in Schools shut Down, then West tough Rights and American Gangsters. That the total cost of destruction citywide was estimated to be a billion dollars and that more than sixty people died during the riots, but witnesses say many more were killed than what the news reported. Flashback to the nineteen eighties. Ice Tea was not yet NYPD sergeant odif and Finn Tutuola on Law and Order SPU, or much of an actor at all. He'd had some bit parts. He was, however, a gifted lyricist and producer, and one of the first l A rappers to break big. Born Tracy Merrow and raised in an affluent New Jersey suburb, Ice was forced to go live with his aunt in south central Los Angeles after both his parents died of heart attacks within the span of four years. He attended Crenshaw High School, where his classmates included members of the rival gang ings, the Crips and the Brims later known as the Bloods. He was never part of either, but hung around some crips who took a liking to him. At seventeen, he moved out of his aunt's place and was able to get a cheap apartment. After serving four years in the army in Hawaii, he returned to l A to make money stealing rolexes, jewelry, and cars. When it got too dicey, he decided to leave his life of crime behind. He pivoted to hip hop, specifically hip hop, inspired by his checkered past and life on the streets in South Central As I said, I rap about what I know. In his two thousand two books Split Decision, he calls his breakout song six in the Morning, which is widely acknowledged as a defining track in the gangster rap movement, a piece of faction, saying quote, it's a fictional adventure based on factual experiences. The song opens with the lines six in the morning, Police at my door, Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor, out my back window. I make my escape. I didn't even get a chance to grab my old school tape. Later, he wraps I'm a self made monster of the city streets, remotely controlled by hard hip hop beats, but just living in the city as a serious task, didn't know what the cops wanted, didn't have time to ask. He eventually became the first rapper signed to Warner Brothers label Sire Records, then home to Madonna. By the end of UD put out three albums of Tough menacing explicit gangster rap that earned favorable reviews from critics, but also a lot of attention from sensors sex, drugs, gun violence, how police were bulldozing Western civilization. Nothing was off the table in his detailed, profane, sometimes disturbing accounts of hustling, running from the law, and rebellion against authority. His debut album, rhymed As was one of the first to get a prontal advisory sticker slapped on it. Ice embrace that sticker like a badge of honor. He scoffed at the idea of censorship. He believed in what he called quote artistic integrity and rejected the idea of recording radio audits of his songs, which weren't getting much airplay anyway. He addressed this on his track Radio Suckers. They're making radio whack. People have to escape. But even if I'm banned, I'll sell a million tapes. He wasn't wrong his trio of LPs for Warner Brothers seven Ryan plays Power, the Iceberg freedom of speech. Just watch what you say. We're all certified platinum or gold, so yeah, fuck radio. He was raking it in just from sales and touring. I didn't think his refusal to play by the rules would result in a serious blow to his career. Or rather, he took great pleasure in the gamble he got off and being an agitator, living on the edge made him feel alive. As he writes in two thousand elevens Ice a mem war of gangster life and redemption from South Central to Hollywood. Quote, I'm not a cat to stay on cruise control. I like to keep ship moving. As the eighties came to a close, he was ready for the next challenge. He cemented his status as a formidable force and gangster rap. Now it was time to take a stabish on the even harder metal. Ice had gotten into rock because of his cousin, Earl, with whom he'd shared a bedroom when he was living with his aunt as a kid in junior high in the mid seventies. Earl exposed him to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath guitar wielding Titans, who left a major imprint on him his iced tea. He'd sampled Black Sabbath and incorporated guitars into his music. As he writes, an ice rap was a form of rock because it, like rock, was an active aggression of a revolt against the status quo. But in while hanging out with some of his old pals in the studio who were clamoring to record with him, he decided to start an actual hard rock band. They called themselves body Count. The mostly white members of the hardcore scene, some tattooeds, some skinheads, weren't always the most welcoming audience for a group of black dudes showing up on their turf. They were suspicious and racist, and body Count did nothing to hide their roots. As the group's guitarist Ernie Cunnigan, better known as Ernie c recalls, you know they were rock. There were black rockers that played rock during that time. They were more accepted than us because they were the makeup and all this kind of stuff. We came out like we just came from a drive box, but we didn't look like a rock man we looked like, but once body Count started playing, many skeptics changed their minds. Not that I thought they had anything to prove. As he noted in his song body Count from his album O G, original gangster rock music was black music, originated by forefathers like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. He reiterates the sentiment in his book Split Decision, saying quote, they took the blues, electrified it, and sped it up. Even the name rock and roll was just the old time black slang for fucking straight up. Ernie c who was ICE's friend from Crenshaw High School, hooked him up with Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction, who invited him to take part in a new roving festival he was launching called Lallapalooza. Ice accepted, dividing his set in half, playing some of his solo work before inviting body Count out onto the stage. The performances were a success, and Ice found himself earning cred with both hip hop heads and alternative audiences. Body Count didn't have much material, but the response they witnessed it shows proved to them that they were onto something. After the first tour, Sire Records signed the group Ice now had two deals with the same label. Body Count hunker down in the studio to record their self titled debut full length, which Sire released in March, a volcanic blast of punk and metal that came wrapped in a miniature body bag. Props to that marketing team body Count. That album took a long, cold look at the dark side of South central Los Angeles. This was a world played by poverty, drugs, and desperation, where violent gangs clashed and kids were the casualty. The tension mounts on with the body count Ice cries and the title track illustrating not only the bloodshed, but how impervious viewers have become to the young corpses piling up in the news, they were just blips before the anchor jumped to a sports segment. This is what inspired the group's name. The World's insane while you drink Champagne and I'm living in black brain goes another line. This was also a land where good guys with the bad guys, where police murdered men for the way they dressed, for the type of music, they blasted for the color of their skin. Body Counts most memorable and most controversial song was cop Killer. It's about his subtle as baby got Back, and for that reason, some whould argue even funnier. It does exactly what it says on the tin, with Ice reciting and it's spoken word intro, I'd like to take a pig out here in this parking lot and shoot him in their motherfucking face. Cue the thrashing, foreboding guitars before Ice unleashes the titular phrase before he launches into the breakneck chorus, we get a fuse, a lot of shots fired into our ears, as if we're the officer at the receiving end of the narrator's maniacal rampage. Then the chorus, cop killer, better you than me, cop Killer, Fuck police brutality, cop Killer. I know your family's grieving, fuck them, cop Killer, But tonight we get even. Okay. I know it may seem weird that I said this song was funny, but it's so over the top, so unsubtle, that by today's standards it sounds almost quaint. But in this was risky business, which was ICE's favorite kind of business. Ice has described cop Killer as a protest song based on psycho killer talking Heads seventy seven new wave and art rock classic. The track was ICE's dark, twisted fantasy of an armed assailant who loses his black friend at the hands of police and then loses his mind hunting down cops one night and snuffing them out one by one. It's nuts to think he wrote it before Hordes of l a residence on a war path ripped through the city, and the spring of In Split Decision, Ice recalls feeling like the l A p D Was a quote unquote criminal regime, and notes that the beating of Rodney King was hardly an isolated incident. He even remembers seeing cop cars in his neighborhood with Confederate flags on their bumpers. Black men feared the Los Angeles police, even if they've done nothing wrong. Coming into a body count rehearsal. One day, Ice was humming Psycho Killer and his bandmate beat Master V told him they should write a song called cop Killer, revealing that he had a friend who'd been shot by police in the back and paralyzed. Ices other bandmate, Ernie C wrote the music, Ice wrote the lyrics. If the subject matter was gruesome, Ice asserted that it shouldn't be reboting. As he writes in his memoir Ice, I'm one of those people who thought that when they said America is the land of free speech, they were sincere. I thought free speech meant I could say whatever I wanted to say, so I just spit it out. I didn't give it too much afterthought. With Cop Killer, Ice put slasher movie imagery to music, hoping to use a slice of outlandish camp fiction to depict a harsh truth. Racial bias and police brutality were very real. Innocent men were dying. But the end of the song breaks and fiction, ripping straight from the headlines. Fucked the police for Darryl Gates, fucked the police for Rodney King, fucked the police from my dead homies, Fucked the police for your freedom. As Ernie C explains, truth telling was body counts entire m O. We wrote songs about what we knew about, and this is what we knew. We know about racism, and we know about a cop killing. That's what made it so irrelevant. But his Ice or counts and split decision. When I wrote Cop Killer, it wasn't addressing all cops. It was addressing racist, abusive, corrupt, out of control cops. Cop Killer wasn't necessarily groundbreaking. Compton hip hop group and w A had already rapped about slaying cops and their infamous song Fucked the Police. How Eric Clapton and even scored a number one hit with his cover of Bob Marley's I Shot the Sheriff way back into It was the timing of the track's release that proved to be its undoing. Soon Ice would have everyone powerful on his back up. Next, after the break, we dig into the nationwide scandal surrounding Iced Tea and Cop Killer after it came out in just weeks before violent riots tore through the streets of Los Angeles. Iced Tea had written cop kular In and had been performing at Lallapalus of the year before it appeared on body Counts debut album, But when the l A p D officers who had beaten Rodney King were acquitted, the response was intense and immediate. The Los Angeles race riots broke out in April, just weeks after body Count dropped. Body Count member Ernie c recalls the moment he first saw the smoke and fire from the riots. He was at ICE's house in the Hollywood Hills doing interviews with some journalist who'd flown in from Germany and they get here and it's like, hey, wind ellis burned it to the ground. They're like, what's going on? And we're like, well, this song right here kind of predicts. It's a precursor to what's going on right now. We came out with this last month, and this is what happens, you know now, So you know, it wasn't a surprise to us, just you know, it was getting to a boiling point given the circumstances, controversy over cop Killer seemed inevitable. When it caught wind of the song, The Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas or CLEAT, the state's largest police advocacy group, boycotted Time Warner. It's president and co founder, Ronda Lord, not only called for Warner Brothers to remove cop Killer from Body Counts album and for the company and Iced Tea to apologize, but it also demanded that ICE make a million dollar donation to a community service program. All of this July six, when Time Warners shareholders would have a meeting in Beverly Hills. Other police organizations followed suit, vilifying ICE and Time Warner media outlets reported on the boycott, but, as Dan Charnis writes in his two thousand ten books The Big Payback The History of the Business of Hip Hop, most of them misidentified cop Killer as an Ice t song and referred to it as a rap track rather than a heavy metal track. The public outcry became specifically a hip hop issue. Was an election year only made matters worse for Ice and body count. Cop Killer was the perfect target for right wing Republicans, an unflinching, incendiary celebration of violence. It was the antithesis of conservative quote unquote family values, and white kids loved it. They went mad to it at live shows, washing and pumping their fists in the air, shouting along with the lyrics. Ice rights in his book Split Decision, the main thing I learned about cop Killer is this, when you inject white kids with black rage, and you do it through something as seductive and persuasives rock and roll, that's dangerous to the people in authority. That's always going to be seen as a threat. Ice recalls wanting the racket to die down, but things only escalated. The l a county board, an Alabama governor, sixty members of the House of Representatives, led by House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich politicians began piling on cop Killer. Soon President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quail had both condemned the release of body count, with Quail declaring at a campaign fundraiser, I am outraged at the fact that Time Warner, a major corporation, is making money off a record called cop Killer that suggests that it is okay to kill cops. I find that outrageous. Quail name dropped cop Killer continually during his and Bushes campaign against Old Clinton that year. Dennis S. Martin, former president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, claimed this song had been implicated and quote at least two incidents and has inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country, and he called it quote an affront to the officers alone who have been killed in the line of duty. Time Warner employees received nasty letters and phone calls not to mention death threats. Still, Gerald Levin, the white co CEO of Time Warner at the time Penda Wall Street Journal, op ed to clarify his stance on the matter. He asserted there, rather than glorifying violence, cop Killer was a portrait of what was going on in its narrator's head. It was fantasy. He explained that instead of trying to quote silence, the messenger opponent should be quote heating the anguished cry contained in his message. He added the dropping the song from Body count would be a quote destructive precedent, hampering artists freedom of expression in the future. Ice too initially stood his ground defending the message behind Cop Killer, but then he started feeling like he was under piercing scrutiny. He'd become a national security risk, he said, the I r S started to audit his taxes, trying to determine if he was amassing guns for some sort of coup, and that his daughter was even pulled out of junior high school and questioned about his possible ties to any quote paramilitary organizations. He had nothing to hide. Everyone knew he had a criminal background because he'd been honest about it from the start of his career. But he was growing uneasy, feeling like some powerful people were closing in. The U S President and VP had decried Body Counts music, but actor and National Rifle Association President Charles and Heston took his disapproval straight to that July sixteenth time Warner shareholders meeting, which took place at the Regent Beverly, Wilshire Hotel. Well pickets sported side lines with slogans like rapid crap outside. Haston addressed a group of roughly a thousand at the meeting. He had stock in the company has been Westhough rights in Original Gangsters. Haston read lyrics from cop Killer and another body Count tract, KKK Bitch to drive his point home. Okay, I gotta pause to just marvel at the absolute fucking absurdity of KKK Bitch, which I literally cannot even say without laughing. I won't go into too much detail, just google it, but I will say this joint is about fictional white supremacist orgies the body Count throw Down South to teach white girls how to properly get laid. It is graphic and deranged and makes even knee blush. Tipper Goore, the wife of then Democratic VP candidate L Gore, had co founded the Parents Music Resource Center or p MRC, which advocated for labeling the covers of records that featured profane language or content with a parental Advisory sticker. Kk He bitch includes a mention of her young nieces to picture middle aged oscar winning thespian Charleton Heston. Mr Ben hur himself reciting any of its lyrics is the most cringe thing I've imagined so far in this podcast. Meanwhile, as Is re calls in his memoir ice before he began reading the words to cop Killer, Heston announced, these are the lyrics to Killer. Cop Oops, I mean cop Killer. Dude clearly hadn't memorized his lines. On a more serious note, two police officers who had been shot in the face also showed up to criticize the song. The July six deadline passed and Cop Killer remained available for purchase, but shareholders were spooked. Time Warner brought in a crisis management expert. Something needed to happen. Warner Brothers had stood behind body Counts music home to Madonna and Prince and Lewd comedian Andrew ice Clay. It was no stranger to controversial artists, but the US President and the FBI also oku money on the line that ship was serious. CEO Gerald Levin in the label were never carrious position, even if all the uproar helped boost Body Counts sales. Some music stores wouldn't carry it. Meanwhile, as west Hough notes and Original Gangsters, the police department in Greensboro, North Carolina, threatened to ignore a stores emergency calls if it continued to stock the album. I didn't want Warner Brothers to take responsibility for a cut he had written. West off details and meeting the artist had with Time Warner in which it placed a quarter on a table, saying it represented its music division and that Ice was just a tiny spot on that quarter. But the musician says he wasn't forced to disavow cop Killer, writing an Ice They never treated me like ship, never got mad or yelled at me. Rather, Ice t says he understood the gravity of the situation. Warner Brothers had even been faced with bomb scares. As Dan Charnis writes into Big Payback, a bomb squad brought in to investigate even detonated a package. Ice empathized with the guys who signed his checks, so he told Warner to remove the song from the album. Cleet ceased its boycott. Ultimately body Count. The album was re released without cop Killer, and the song was given away as a free single at body Count concerts to hear it today. You can snag a CD copy of the original pressing of the album on eBay or discards, or you can listen to it on YouTube. But as many discovered in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapples police in two thousand twenty, it is not streaming or available to download. The reason why remains a mystery. But Jeffrey Weiss, a Warner Brothers product manager for body Count's debut album, speculated to Billboard, I can really imagine ice T doesn't want to think about ninet ninety two that much, m unlike yours truly. After the debacle, Warner dropped some of its wrap acts because of the questionable content of their music. As for ice t solo rap career at the Sire label, well, his victoriol towards the Police was well intact on his planned fifth album, Home Invasion, which boasted provocative, violent cover art and included lyrics about cops breath smelling like semen and a narrator taking them in an alley and giving them a pop pop pop to the dome time. Warner balked at this, even though he still owed the label two Records. Ice knew what was at stake for him, his bandmates, and the label if he kept their arrangement and continued to speak filter free constant conflict, He felt he had no choice but to ask to terminate his embody Counts contracts, says body Counts er Andy, See, we were stopped. We were stopped at a stop, you know what I mean. And in the band, which is brand new, we weren't going anywhere. Mortars didn't want to book us, you know, and when people yeah, it was just time for us to go to keep moving forward. After having worked with Ice for six years, Warner Brothers obliged and turned him loose. Released on Priority Records in March, Home Invasion went gold, but sold about half the copies of its predecessor, O G Original Gangster. Some records stores refused to carry it, others kept its placement. Discreet reviews were mixed. ICE's music career is never the same. Even after cop Cler disappeared from Body Count's debut album, police groups continue to boycott the band shows. He'd arguably become more famous for his acting on Law and Order SVU, as Ice writes in his two thousand eleven memoir, Ice. People think controversy helps your bottom line, but I disagree. There was a big trade off. Yes, you sell some records with all that static, the cancelation of concerts, the hiking insurance for the shows you do get, there are way more costs to come along with controversy than benefits. I would never advise people the controversy is the way to blow up. You'll become known, but will translate into money probably not. Ice had long been considered an o G, but after he essentially tossed cop Killer in the bargain bin of his catalog hip hop magazine, the source castigated him, with the REGINALD C. Dennis writing an op ed titled the Cops gag Iced Tea as Rerap Dead. The piece began mark July on your calendars as the beginning of the end of rap music? Would conservatives win? Some of ICE's peers now deem him a coward. They became as harsh as critics. He claims, why stifle his creativity, his resounding rallying cry against police brutality for a bunch of stuffy Republicans? Why give in? Why risk opening the floodgates from more censorship in hip hop and music in general. Still, he stands his ground ready in his memoir walk in My Shoes for a day. That was some stressful, hectic shit. That was heat coming from the government of the United States. I was in quicksand for months. There was no safe ground to stand up. The body count backlash took its toll on Iced Tea. But in addition to career drama, he was dealing with some personal stuff. In ninety two well, he had stopped coordinating jewel heights to pursue music. His longtime friend, an ex crime partner, Spike, had fallen deeper and deeper into crime, his schemes getting more and more elaborate, more and more dangerous. After one of his robberies resulted in a fatal shooting, Spike, who orchestrated the theft, was sentenced to thirty five years to life in prison. Ice was shocked when he heard the news. He and Spike had never been by during their days executing heist. He soon learned that Spike hadn't shot the victim, but had been implicated for overseeing the robbery. Spike disappeared. I didn't hear from him for three years. When he finally did, Spike was calling him from a phone in prison. At that moment, I became very aware of how lucky he was to have abandoned the life of hustling and heights. He'd had Potus, the FBI, the I R S, the n r A, and the police on his back, but unlike Spike, he had his freedom up Next, after the break, Ice Tea joins us to talk about the legacy of Cop Killer, the fallout from its release, and his new book Split Decision, which chronicles his life as a jewel thief and traces the very different paths he and Spike followed. Please know this segment contains themes of violence, explicit language, and cursing that may not be suitable for all listeners. Welcome back to Where Were You and nine two. We've been discussing Ice Team and as heavy metal band Body Counts track cop Killer and Off the Rails, controversial protest anthem that address police brutality. Now it's time to hear from the man behind it, rapper, actor, songwriter and producer Ice Team. So can you tell me about that particular moment in your life? I've I've asked a lot of the guests, where were you in ninety two? That's how I start the interview, and uh, you you can tell me very clearly where you were. And this book is, like I said, sort of hinges on that particular moment in time. So you know, ninety two is kind of like when we got hit with the cop Killers ship, you know, like they turned around and after Rodney King, they were really looking for escapegoat. They were looking. You know, the pressure was on the police because obviously for video they people saw they were out of pocket, and the Fraternal Order the police in Texas found this song and they go, oh, let's pointing him. He's the problem. And they try to, you know, deflect what's really going on, which is cops killing kids. To me making an imaginary strong about someone who who went after the cops. Now, now I gotta remember, if the cops weren't out of pocket at that time, there was no energy to write cop killer, you know. If the cops are out doing the right thing, pulling cats out of trees and everyone loved him, I couldn't have done fireman killer. I couldn't have done school teacher killer. I couldn't have done anything. But the cops were at that place where people were like these motherfucker's and I come up with this character. Well, the ship at the fan for me, you know, the president came after me everybody time Warner was with madness. Simultaneously, I got one of my friends who disappeared, and next thing you know, Spike was gone. Spike went to prison and didn't make a phone call for five years. Um, and now I'm getting these broken like what happened? What went wrong? This? That and the other? You know, somebody got killed and Spike got the got the charge which is a conspiracy for setting it up. And they told me he had a life sentence and I'm like wow, you know wow. So but this not only was happening with Spike, it was happening with multiple with my friends. So no matter what music you ever heard out of Ice Team, it's always gone down in the turmoil of the reality of it. And that's why I see music always is a is a warning like this looks like fun, but it all One of my first records on the first album is fun in the beginning, but it's paying me in and uh yeah, that's why we ended up doing this book. You have to really defend yourself when this was going down to there's this line that I really like. You say it's fiction. I mean, it's based on reality, but I'm not. I'm not killing cops. I don't want to kill cops. You say, if if you believe Ice Tea is out there killing cops, and you believe David Bowie is an astronaut. The problem with hip hop is that it's blurs that line so many times. Sometimes I am talking about myself. Sometimes I'm creating characters that are living it out. Like in Power I said, I'm living large as possible. Posse's unstoppable style, topical, vividly optical. Listen, you'll see them sometimes I'll be them, so you know, and colors, I become a gang member, and and and and you know. So this is it. I just think because it was hip hop and it was such an un understood genre, they didn't want to give us that artistic license. It had to be you know, autobiographical card directly even though. But it was a lot of racism thrown in there too, because body count ain't rapped. Body counts rock, but they called it a rap record because if you say rock, a lot of white people will go well, I like Fleetwood Mac. I mean like, what's the problem? Rock is rebellion? You know, so they knew what they were doing. You know, when you say rap, you say nigga music, you did what I'm saying that that black music they talked. So I got put into that zone for minute, but I hadn't. I didn't have to defend myself with my fans. Next record, like stop, apologize and don't waste your time because you're not really talking to people that like you any fucking way. So you know, now here I am. How what many years later, the longest running cop in the history of television? How about that for America? The ironing, the irony. I don't think you could find more ironic person than you know. What is it like? You know you're still performing? You can you just forgot? There's a twist at the end of the dayn book where you win and Grammy and you know, your body Count wins to Grammy in one and you you surprised. You're surprised, Spike. I won't say exactly how I don't want to spoil it, but um, what is it like to perform cop Killer today? Yeah? Do you have any hesitations? What's the feat like? No hesitations? Um? I just I mean, right now, I hate to say it, but it's a fucking hit, and it's a hit. Seat music happens and climates. You did get what I'm saying. So if we're watching, if we're listening to Grateful Dead, you might want to take some acid. Because that's the sixties, that's the climate. Body Count happened in climate of rage against the machine, public enemy, so it almost needs that unrest for it to work. Right. It's it's so kind of like when Obama was president. You couldn't even be mad. You like my Obamas, like, oh yeah, by the way, we caught in live and y'all chill, have some more champagne. Take it easy. He was just so smooth, like, you know, whether the country, whatever the country was. Obama never lets you know anything was going wrong. It was just like, yo, jay Z will be up here tonight. We're gonna play a little basketball. You know. It was very player. Baba was the most player president. Okay. Then Trump came scared ship out of everybody. Trump's like I'm gonna die tomorrow, you know, and perfect climate for rage to come back. Body count and the cops were back out of control. So now I'm singing a record it's twenty five years old. But the people understand what I'm saying because the keywords and cop killer is. The theory of it is is that if me and you were in the street and you're a police officer and you're about to take my life at that moment, fuck law. Now we're too human beings in the streets. So it's better you than me. I'm not gonna this kneel because you're the law, and let you put a bullet in my fucking head. George Floyd had every reason to fight back. They were trying to kill him, you know, so that submitship. So but the keywords is cop killer is better you than me? Cop killer? Fuck police brutality. This is a song that's bent on someone who's spilt that over police brutality. So when I go out and I sing it right now, I'm quite sure people like, wow, you're a law in order you're singing it. But trust me, Dick Wolf. They hired Iced Tea for Iced Tea. They know who I am, and they know how I stand politically. You made it very clear in the lyrics what you were going for. You say police brutality, explicitly. It's almost like you know, foreshadowing, you know, these these these recent moments that's just very much back in the news in a major way. Um, what do you think the legacy of body Count is? What do you think the legacy of a track like cop Killer is? I just think, you know, basically body Count is just good protests music, and we think sing about issues, We sing about topics. You know, with heavy metal, a lot of it is just being brutal, you know. So we got those songs No Remorse and all that hardcore. You know. I'm writing a new album it's called Merciless, you know. But in a body Count album, really body Count album is, it's really an iced t album done the metal. So there's a one. There's always a song about girls, probably sexy. There's always something that's totally fucking outrageous, but there will be some knowledge in there, some games, something that's we you need to hear and learn and understand. So I think the legacy of body Count is not just a metal band, but a metal band that always talked about something to fix that people can get behind, you know. I remember Raging and it's the machine opened for us when they were first starting out and we're on the same channel. You know. Um, the only difference with body Count is I didn't want to be totally political because I kin't think that can kind of get monotonous, you know. So I call body count. I call body count. Body Count is is grindhouse. It's a Tarantino movie. It's so violent that it's funny. It's over the top grindhouse. You know, when the guy goes to his car, he doesn't grab a gun, he grabs a rocket launch here. You know, So some of this stuff, if you don't get the the humor and KKK, bitch, if you don't get the humor, and Mama's Gotta Die to night where I decapitate and dismember my mother with again suit car harving knife that we only use for bullshit holidays like things, if you don't get that dark humor, if it a shift out of it. But the people that like it get it, and they don't. They like the humor, they like the edge. They get it. It's so funny that, you know, people watch slasher films horror movies, and you know, I'm not saying that the directors get a carte blanche for that, but it's just funny that people will let that slip through the cracks a little bit more easily than these sort of this sort of imagery and music, and really, what's the difference. It's still there's entertaining, still inject entertainment and humor and gore, and just like you said, to the point where it's camp this sort of level of of of of you know, of horror and imagery that that you know, can just scare people, frankly, and I just don't. I don't. I know, it's always kind of struck me as odd that that people will make that distinction when it's just another form of a fantasy and fiction what it is. Jason, I think the problem is I shift from that to dead series and people don't Sometimes they just don't know when I'm being serious or when I'm fucking with you, and I can't. I can't change that. I mean, to me, that's part of the fund is that, you know, I mean, I used to always have people come over my house and there's out there'll be doing interviews with me and I'll go, oh, well, you know, homelessness, and you know, we have the AIDS epidemic and we have to go through these problems with poverty. But I'm running late. I gotta get to a pit bull fight, So could we hurry up and cut this interview off? There? Like what the fund is, But I'm not going to a pit bull fight. I'm just saying this ship the funk with them body's head, and I just Rick Rubin said Iced Tea Andrew Dice, Clay Eminem have the ability to say the most wrong thing at the most inopportune time, and it's wonderful, WONDERFULK Then I could also bite you in the asp, you know, like like it did you know when when cop Killer came back to hut you well a year after it actually came out, just because, like you said, they were trying to find a target for election, yere, Well, you gotta you got you gotta be prepared for it, you know. I mean, if you're outrageous and you're pushing the edge, you never know when you're gonna really offend some fucking body, you know. So, like Seymour Science said, it wasn't the best title. It's kind of like, you know, you're really asking for it. So I learned, I learned, but you know, I still can't stop doing it. Like I don't, and I don't think you have any regrets about it about that song. No, not at all, not at all, because like I said, I wasn't telling people you should go kill cops. I don't hate cops. This was a song. See, like I said, the song was made off psycho Killer by Talking Ted. I was singing psycho Killer in the rehearsal Hall and Dick my drummer rest and Pie said we need a cop killer, so coming off the third psycho Killer. So the psycho killer is a cop killer. So it's it's not it's an insane person, you know. But they're not mad at talking heads for singing psycho Killer, which is a song about a psycho killer. So I just targeted somebody with this crazy lunatic. I think what scared people about it is because the cop killer kind of became a hero like that. They people liked it. And like I said, if I made a song called school teacher killer, wife killer, fireman killer, nobody would what the are you talking about? But the fact and also Ernie said, it's not even really about cops. It's about authority. People hate authority, They hate security guards, they hate anyone that says no, So it's like funck authority right now, especially when your brutal fuck you iced tea story as a happy ending, I don't just mean that he wounded up playing one of the most famous cops on TV, the kind of irony Ice relishes. He also got to reconnect with Spike and team up with him again, however, this time not for anything dodgy or illegal. You can read all about it in Nice, his new book, Split Decision. As for cop Killer, when asked about its legacy, Body Con guitarist Ernie c sums it up as a bunch of angry black kids from South Central channeling their inner Ramoans and just writing a plain spoken, no nonsense punk song. But he also recognizes that it's more than that. It defined a movement and defined cop Killer is part of our legacy. It kept us around for this long. We stood for something and we really said what we meant, you know. And that's what's so important about that song. We wrote the soundtrack to the Riot, and you can't take that away. That song reflects that year. If you put that gear in a capsule, that song would have to be part of it. The tracks message feels more relevant and resident than ever after the killing of George Floyd and so many more victims of police brutality and the unrest, riots, and racial recording that followed in two Thou the song may not be as readily available as other protest anthems, but if you're frustrated enough, hurt enough, enraged enough, you can find it, play it, and scream along to that chorus. It exists, furious and unhinged, fearless and unstoppable, the sound of something cracking open and waking up. Where Were You in ninety two was a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Tog. The show is researched, written and hosted by me Jason Lafier, with editing and sound design by Michael Alder June. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.