Interesting Interview with Ice-T and Author and Filmmaker Nelson George

'Thank God hip-hop came along'

Excerpt:
Ice-T:
"What makes my music different from pretty much anybody else's is that I always try to show both sides of the game. I tell you about the fun at the beginning but there's pain in the end. Anybody who tells you about crime and doesn't tell you that there's pain, they're full of shit and they've never been there. Half of my crew is locked up. They tell me what's going on, and I listen. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes, sometimes through the mistakes of others. I felt like I was running down this road, this hustling road, where I thought it was going to be roses and money and all that good shit at the end. I got to the end of the road and I seen there's a cliff, over the edge of the cliff fires are burning. Now I'm running back up yelling at people not to go down that road."

Nelson George:
"There is a really weird dynamic with hip-hop culture. On one hand there's a feeling that music is so powerful that these guys can create violence. They're engaged in a dialogue about it, obviously, but they don't create it by any means. On the other hand these guys are all great actors."