Ice-T, and not the Long Island Kind.

There are times when you just Know you are getting old. Well, older at least. This morning I had one of those moments. I listened to Ice-T this morning and he actually made sense. He was being interviewed by an NPR reporter about his documentary movie about Rap. Mentioned in passing that Rap had probably saved him from a life, short life probably, of crime. Sounded familiar so I listened more. Angry speech, he said, is the result of freeing people to express themselves. I agree. Maybe not the only effect of freedom but certainly one of them. Rap is poetry produced by poets freed from the constraints of convention. I get that. Rap was and maybe still is angry, lashing out at the world the Rappers inhabit. I get that too.

I don't like to listen to the music (?) called Rap, but Ice-T sure made sense. Back to getting old. This guy started 20 years ago. Twenty!!! I remember hearing his early gangsta stuff and thinking something like "man, this is dangerous and angry stuff!" It was. And now he is making films, acting in a major TV series and being interviewed on NPR, not as a criminal but as a spokesperson for Rap. How fast those 20 years went.

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