Ice-T Declares Contemporary Music As "Delusional"

The gangsta rap veteran reflects on the state of today's hip-hop scene.

Ice-T has made his views on today’s popular music known, most recently blasting Soulja Boy for “single handedly killing hip-hop.” Now, he’s taking a less dynamic approach, explaining that contemporary rap doesn’t accurately reflect the state of the world.

The rapper-turned-actor explained that it’s an evenhanded exchange between fans and artists. “I just think that right now, you have so many blogs, you have so much news... There’s so much news that’s being pumped at you through the internet and stuff. People just want to hear music that doesn’t have anything to do with reality,” he told CNN. “They’d rather just listen to music about ‘party, party, party.’ We don’t want to deal with the issues because they’re dealing with the issues daily, all day.”

He continued by stating that the music suffers because of this oversaturation of news. “The music doesn’t reflect it. We’re in a war, got a black president, we got lots of things going on. We got economic problems, you got the Wall Street situation,” he said. “You’re not going to find any of those in any of the music. It’s not being reflected. People are trying to run from the truth because music is very delusional.”

Ice-T most recently released his autobiography Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption—From South Central to Hollywood, addressing reviews that it’s an “easy read.” “It’s exactly meant to feel like that. It’s meant to feel like you’re dealing in a conversation with me,” he said. “You get the full vibe of me, I wasn’t pulling any punches. When people say it’s a fast read, I say is that a good thing? But I’m doing a lot of press and they’re like, that’s a great thing. You want to keep the pages turning.”