It’s A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood - Writing Ice T’s Book

Reflections on our first meeting to discuss the book’s title, “The Ice Opinion”

I was set to move to Los Angeles the next day, and Simon & Schuster had pulled our book deal. The “Cop Killer” controversy had hit the front page of the New York Times, and the book editor called me to apologize. CEO Richard Snyder didn’t want the heat, he said.

I had no deal, no apartment, I was already packed up to move from San Francisco, and I did the only thing I could think of doing: I called an activist. I had been working at a gym in San Francisco and met a black businessman who had been involved in the Civil Rights movement as a young man growing up in New York. He gave me a loan for $3,000, and told me to go write that book.

This was 1992, and I had been driving back and forth from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where I am from. I drove down to L.A. during the Uprising in early May to write the book proposal while the city was still smoldering. I shadowed Ice T around, as he shot a music video in burned out buildings on Vermont Avenue in South Central. I was crashing at the editor of CREEM’s apartment in Venice, and I got enough material to create a proposal and secure us a book deal through a friend of a friend.

Now, with three grand in hand, I moved down to Hollywood and found a little bungalow apartment in Beachwood Canyon. I had already been writing for Entertainment Weekly, and I soon began freelancing for the Los Angeles Times as a music critic. I joined a gym and often saw Ice T working out with his friends. I knew that the book idea I had for the O.G. was gonna happen. I just had to be patient. A few months after I moved to L.A., I received a call from his manager that the book deal was on.

I will always remember that day. I was drinking bourbon with the Watts Prophets on a rainy LA day when my pager blew up…

I returned the call from the home of Richard Dedeaux - one of the famed poet - prophets. The joy of knowing the book was finally on was swiftly crushed with the fee the manager informed me I would be paid. When I dug in, Ice’s manager told me he would get a Rolling Stone reporter to write it instead. That’s when I morphed into a pitbull, and reminded him the book had been my idea. I summoned some liquid courage and demanded a better advance, and I got it. Such as it was.

I even secured a small advance on the advance, and I will always remember how I spent it. I went directly to Office Depot and bought my favorite purple-lined notepads, my favorite Uni-ball Roller pens, a tape recorder, some batteries, a bottle of tequila and Prizzi’s goat cheese pizza with artichoke and sun-dried tomatoes, Sicilian deep dish style, with a side of garlic sticks and creme brulee. I was living large that night.

The next day, I drove to Ice T’s Sunset Plaza home for the first time, no expectations on how things would go. I had a list of chapters written down on my pretty purple-lined notebook, and as I parked my old Fiat Spider in front of his home, I caught a glimpse of the view of the faraway ocean.

Just like heaven.

His better half, Darlene Ortiz, answered the door. I had already been a fan of hers from meeting her at shows, and til this day, I think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world. In just a few short years, she would become one of my best friends, and nearly 25 years after writing his book, I wrote hers.

She was quiet back then, and she invited me into the living room, where Ice T was sitting on the couch with his son, Lil Ice, on his lap. Lil Ice was about a year old, and they were watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Not particularly gangster.

As Darlene clipped coupons (!) quietly in the kitchen, Ice T told me how much he loved watching Mr. Rogers with his son. “He’s so calm, and positive, sets a good example,” he said.

And that was the beginning of our first meeting about the book project. We had chatted over the phone before when I interviewed him for the cover of BAM Magazine after he blew my mind at the first Lollapalooza with his speed metal band, Body Count.

I sat at the edge of the couch, witnessing this beautiful domestic scene, and as we each pulled out our notes, I realized our chapter titles matched almost verbatim.

It was one of those moments of kismet when you just know something was preordained - just one of those cosmic things.

He already knew what he wanted the title to be: The Ice Opinion - Who Gives A Fuck?

He wanted readers to know that it wasn’t a biography, it was a book documenting his opinions - about rap, South Central, the world, life. He also added the subtitle because he didn’t want people to think he was taking himself too seriously. The subtitle served another more profound purpose - on the first page, he describes what it feels like growing up when it seems like no one gives a f**k.

I know I did.

🤍

I will be sharing a lot more from this book and others, but one thing I wanted to leave you with. There are moments in a writer’s life to be savored, moments when you know you finished something, and it’s perfect, and all the pain and the struggle that accompany that life dissipates for a fleeting few magical moments. I had that experience for the first time when I delivered the first draft of Ice T’s book to his manager’s doorstep in Studio City. It was midnight when I dropped off the book in a box, all dot matrixed out.

I was listening to AM radio, and Ella and Louis were singing, They Can’t Take That Away from Me - as I drove down the Hollywood Freeway home. The top was down, the night was warm, and I knew the book was perfect. I had captured his words in an authentic way, and you can’t take that away from me.

It was a moment. I have learned to savor such moments. I am glad I didn’t miss it.

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As I will be writing on these pages, this book was the first book of rap. It opened a lot of people’s minds to what at the time was known as the CNN of the streets.

Years later, when I was interviewing Rob Aston of the Transplants for one of my other books, Warped Book - Tales of Freedom and Psychotic Ambition - a pictorial history of the Vans Warped Tour, I asked him if he had read The Ice Opinion. I could hear the lyrical DNA of my first book all throughout the Transplants songs.

He told me that book had been his bible. He was on tour as a roadie with AFI, as a young teenager, when Ice T loaned him the book, and it profoundly impacted his view of the world. He never gave it back.

And so it goes.

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