Counting My Blessings

Or, how my interview with Ice-T about Body Count's new album gave me a belated kick in the ass

Ice-T, 2024. Photo by Jesse Korman

I rarely post here about the work I do for other publications and websites, mostly because I figure my subscribers are coming to Jagged Time Lapse for content they can’t find anywhere else. But every once in a while, I do an interview that’s so much fun and so inspiring that I just want to share it wherever I can.

Back in late August, I interviewed the legendary rapper and actor Ice-T for Revolver magazine. Our Q&A was largely about his controversial and long-running metal band Body Count — whose appropriately-titled eighth album Merciless is out now — but also touched on his acting life, as well as his semi-dormant rap career.

I rarely get nervous before interviews anymore, but I was definitely a little on edge going into this one — after all, I’ve a huge fan of Ice’s work since his 1987 debut album Rhyme Pays, and he is definitely known to be a cat who does not suffer fools or half-assed questions gladly. But the Ice-T I spoke with over Zoom that day turned out to be incredibly warm, funny, down to earth, and even a little bit silly.

“What I talk about in ‘Comfortably Numb’ is 100 percent Body Count, without bastardizing their song,” he told me, talking about Body Count’s stunning new David Gilmour-assisted cover of the Pink Floyd classic. “I didn’t turn it into, like, ‘Comfortable Buns’ or some shit. [Laughs] I wouldn’t have gotten approved for that!”

But most of all, Ice was as cool as his name would imply — not in the sense of remoteness, but in the sense that he truly loves what he does, which comes through with joy that’s both low-key and infectious. Speaking with him was really inspiring, and reading the interview again three months later as a Revolver cover story just kinda pumped me up all over again. I’d gotten some writing-related news on Monday that sent me down a rabbit hole of seething bitterness for about 24 hours, but re-reading our interview yesterday reminded me of how much I truly love what I do for a living, and how grateful I am to have been able to cross paths with so many interesting and inspiring artists over the decades.

To that end, I’ll be sharing a lot more cool interviews from my archives here in the coming months, many of which have never run anywhere in full. In this case, I only had about 30 minutes with Ice, so pretty much everything of worth from our interview session is included in the Revolver interview, which you can read here in its entirety.

So thanks, Ice, for keeping it real and giving me a time-release reminder to keep doing what I’m doing and not let the publishing business bullshit bring me down.

And on that note, I’d like to wish all my readers a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend; I’m deeply thankful that I’ve got family and friends to see and some good food to eat, and I sure hope you do, too. Catch y’all back here on Monday…

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