Body Count on Donald Trump, police brutality, racism and new album ‘Carnivore’
Ice T and Ernie C speak to Kerrang! Radio at Download Festival
Fresh from storming the Zippo Encore Stage at Download Festival on Sunday, Body Count’s Ice T and Ernie C spoke to Kerrang! Radio’s Sophie K backstage.
Reflecting on their triumphant performance, Ice T said they “kept it intense” and hoped they’d won over some new fans before expressing his admiration for festival goers.
“I don’t care if Jimi Hendrix came back from the dead, I wouldn’t sleep in a tent to see anybody!,” Ice T joked. “So, these fans are way more committed than my black ass would be so I gotta give ‘em everything I got. I respect them. It’s past my ability to comprehend sleeping in the mud. God bless them. I’m ready to come back next year.”
Sophie then asked whether their hard-hitting and highly powerful anthem ‘No Lives Matter’ was inspired by Trump being elected.
“We wrote it during the (election) Primaries,” Ice T explained. “We never mentioned Trump’s name on the album (‘Bloodlust’), I try not to mention his name at all. It’s kind of like, it gives it validity. Usually when I’m texting I use the clown emoji (for Trump) or the carrot.
“We really didn’t think honestly he could become President and how stupid were we?! But that’s my belief, racism is real but really, it’s much more of a class situation and when it comes to the poor we’re all collateral damage when it comes to it.
“So black people might have it bad, white people you’re not out of the boat, don’t think it’s just us – when it comes to it, poor white people you’re trash and get moved over there too when it comes to the elite and the wealthy.”
Download Festival 2018
Elsewhere in the interview, Ice T said that police brutality is still very much a reality in America and not much has changed since Body Count exploded onto the scene more than quarter of a century ago.
“The more things change; the more things stay the same,” Ice T said. “Y’know we could talk about racial issues, it’s changed a lot but it’s not. Racists are still here. The cops have changed but violence… it’s kind of like sad that 25 years later we’re still dealing with the same s***. What do you do? I mean, it’s just one of those things. What we try to do is say like ‘hey, we’re still here.’
“We gotta address it in some kind of way but I don’t know y’know. If you go back for us 20 years how much sh*t has changed in that? Maybe not. It’s changed a little but not dramatic enough and the people on the bottom always feel it the worst. They feel it the most. If you could get some money, you can get away from it a little bit, but the people on the bottom it hasn’t changed at all for them. So, we sing for the people that may not have a voice.”
Ice T also said Body Count are going to up the ante on their next album ‘Carnivore’, tentatively set for release in 2019.
“We have got the same line-up from (2014’s) ‘Manslaughter’ to (2017’s) ‘Bloodlust’, there is a thing called momentum, we don’t want to lose that so we’re gonna start working on a new album this year called ‘Carnivore’,” Ice T explained.
“We’re gonna see if we can outdo ‘Bloodlust’. Our goal is not to be the biggest rap-rock band, our biggest goal is always just to outdo our last album. You set the bar, I think ‘Bloodlust’ was a little bit better than ‘Manslaughter’ so we gotta go and outdo ‘Bloodlust’ and that’s a bar because we really like this last album so we have to go in and get serious. It can be done.”
Watch the full interview below where Body Count talk high school memories, the Rick and Morty and Family Guy tributes to Ice T, the rapper bringing his two-year-old daughter on stage before ‘Talk S---, Get Shot’ and working Body Count lyrics into his acting role on Law & Order.