Rapper, Writer, Pop-Cultural Player:
How Ice-T’s journey informs
the African American experience
since 1992.
full name / name of organization:Josephine Metcalf (Hull), William Turner (Manchester), UKcontact email:We are seeking two further essays to contribute to this collection which aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues relating to African American urban life and cultural representation in the post civil rights era. The project will do so using Ice-T – and his myriad roles as musician, actor, writer, celebrity, industrialist - as a vehicle through which to interpret and understand various angles of the black experience in contemporary America. Questions to be considered include: how have African Americans contributed to recent popular culture terrain (both as artists and producers)? To what extent have the politics of race representation, gender and class evolved? In what ways have notions of geographical space and place progressed?
Ice-T stresses his pop-cultural ubiquity, and seemingly effortless ability to negotiate a number of cultural terrains. Though he was not the first rapper to star in a reality TV show, Ice-T has most recently made his mark in the documentary and reality genre, as writer, director, producer and star. As he details: “I didn’t want to become somebody who could only do one thing. ‘Oh, this dude used to be in a gang and now he makes rap records. You know, that’s all they can do is rap’ ”. Ice-T’s jack-of-all-trades approach has seen him journey into conventionally “white” cultural areas (including rock music and a network Cop show). Moreover, his adoption of various roles within a startling multitude of pop-cultural arenas provides an opportunity to discuss the intersection of written, musical and filmic forms. This is the first book that, taken as a whole, looks at a black pop-cultural icon's manipulation of (or manipulation by?) so many different cultural forms simultaneously. The result is a fascinating series of tensions and paradoxes, in particular surrounding notions of racial authenticity or ‘real-ness’, which this book is uniquely placed to address.
Despite branching out into numerous genres (with impressive degrees of success in all), most of the scholarly attention to Ice-T has focused on his rapping career in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well as the Cop Killer debate, and his move into films with New Jack City, a celebrated text in the ghetto film genre of a similar time frame. Though today he is regularly booked on the college lecture circuit, his place in the academy is mostly restricted to the political and social critique played out in his rap lyrics and character of cop in NJC. There have been no scholastic monographs or collections of essays dedicated to Ice-T alone and his moves into literary realm have been relatively untouched, in part because of the recent release dates of his memoir and novel (both 2011). No other book has sought to frame Ice-T within the debates that his multiple careers present. This edited collection seeks to re-address the relatively under-researched aspects of his career as a means to understand the context of recent US history and culture for African Americans. He can be used as a site for channelling topical discussions about youth, crime, race, and violence, as well as opening up a series of discourses about issues varying from black masculinity and representational politics, through to celebrity and cultural commerce.
Please contact William Turner and Josephine Metcalf for further information on the collection; we are particularly keen to hear from scholars who would be interested in addressing gender politics in Ice-T’s reality show “Ice Loves Coco”.