I look at my career and I feel I have the potential to maybe mature into a Samuel Jackson-type older cat, and people will still respect me and say 'Yo, Ice-T was wild', into my old age. And why not? I don't necessarily think I'll be rapping in 10 years.

If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.

Being in the military just lets you know how helpless you are. You could train forever but you're still at the mercy of someone in the Pentagon, or somebody in the rear moving you around like a chess piece.

It really really sunk into me when I went to Europe and they take rap so much more serious than we do here. That was the first time I ever heard rap considered folk music. And sometimes somebody will make you understand like, "Hey, what you doin' is serious, don't play it lightly 'cause it's changin' my life."

I'm afraid because some police are way out of control. My true feeling with police is this: If they do their job, there's no problem.

It's like a paradox. For one side, being popularized rap got better and the other side of it got worse. It's very pop and it's very different now. When you make it as pop and as soft as it is, it lacks its integrity. It lacks its accountability. It lacks a lot of other things that came from that dangerous time in hip hop.

Now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power.