“Cop Killer” [Chugger Edition]

1992. The Time Warner annual shareholders’ meeting.

Actor Charlton Heston takes the stage.

The Ben-Hur and Planet of the Apes star clears his throat.

Then recites lyrics from Body Count’s debut album:

The future president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and passionate advocate of the Second Amendment – who’d famously tell Vice President Al Gore the only way to take his guns would be to pry them “from my cold, dead hands" – did not seem so enthused about Black people’s rights to defend themselves against violent, or corrupt, law enforcers.

The idea for “Cop Killer” came to Body Count in a rehearsal room in South Central LA, when drummer Beatmaster V walked in, furious after getting pulled over by cops. 

Ice-T looked at him and thought, there’s a song here. His long-time musical collaborator Ernie C picked up his guitar and started jamming out a riff.

“Cop Killer, better you than me…”

Body Count was never supposed to be controversial. They were a metal band built on the same blueprint as every metal band Ice-T had grown up loving:

ST, who – as I’ve written before – “were blacklisted by ‘nervous promoters’ due to reports and fears of gang violence and affiliations at their shows.” A reputation that Body Count inherited almost immediately.

Ice-T knew exactly which tradition he was working in. 

Anti-authority. Unapologetic. In other words… Heavy F**kin’ Metal.

Here’s the thing… Black Flag were a punk band, the majority of its band members were white, and they didn’t have the same “gangster” look that Body Count had.

The line between poetic licence and violent intent had never been an issue for white artists. 

Ice-T has always been clear about what Body Count actually are. 

Not a political manifesto or a call to arms. Something closer to a Tarantino movie – or more specifically, a Grindhouse Robert Rodriguez movie.

The kind of music that’s:

Were Body Count actually asking people to commit murder on law enforcement? Obviously not. 

But that’s how politicians positioned themselves against them. 

Nobody extended the same charity to a metal band run by Black men that they extended to a Hollywood franchise.

At the time of writing, Ice-T had been obsessing over "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads – perhaps the whitest song ever recorded. A nervous, herky-jerky art-rock song about a serial killer, sung in broken French. 

Ice-T took the first-person fictional killer of that song and transplanted him into South Central. 

Ernie C had been playing guitar since Crenshaw High, performing to crowds of gangbangers.

His guitar makes it metal rather than a rap track with distortion underneath.

The riff pummels you like a blunt object – punk aggression that borrows from the same Bay Area playbook as early Slayer and Metallica: driving riffs that build tension, detonated by open power chords.

Fast, precise and ugly in exactly the right way.

What makes the song structurally interesting is its restraint. Body Count doesn’t reach for complexity. The riff doesn't develop or modulate. It creates the same claustrophobic pressure as the situation it's describing: no exit or resolution… the same grinding reality on loop.

The song’s history is well-documented. 

The record was largely ignored upon its initial release in March 1992. 

However, within a month, four policemen were acquitted for their part in the murder of Rodney King. This was the catalyst for the LA riots during April and May of 1992. 

These riots resulted in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, 12,000 arrests… and property damage estimated at above $1 billion.

The controversy against the song was ignited in May 1992 by Glenn White, a Dallas police officer, who published an article titled “New Rap Song Encourages Killing Police Officers” in the Dallas police department newsletter, The Shield. 

From there, things moved fast. 

By early June, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) launched a formal campaign to force the removal of the album from stores. 

In July, President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle publicly denounced the song as “sick” and “obscene”.

On July 28, 1992, due to death threats against label employees, Ice-T officially announced he would pull the track from the album.

He pulled the album, not because of threats made to himself, but to the Warner Bros label. The bomb squad was called to the record label’s HQ twice.

Time Warner was receiving a massive volume of angry phone calls and letters, with one report stating that company president Lenny Waronker received as many as 500 death and bomb threats.

For Ice-T, the situation became “nerve-racking” once the threats moved toward the record company because it meant that innocent employees could be hurt.

This was the primary reason Ice-T eventually decided to pull the song from the album, stating that he felt Warner Bros. was "taking the war" for him.

But what’s often glossed over are the racial implications.

Ice-T put it plainly. 

Believing he was a real “cop killer” was like believing David Bowie was an astronaut. 

The basic assumption that an artist is performing – not confessing – is automatic for white artists. 

For Ice-T, it had to be argued. At press conferences. To gun-touting, Golden Globe-winning Hollywood stars. Even to the President of the United States.

There’s a profound hypocrisy at play. Body Count made the American public uncomfortable because they were Black. Because they were waving guns and spouting violent rhetoric.

The same rhetoric attached to white people doesn’t provoke an eyebrow raise. 

But, despite what gun violence statistics might show us, white kids aren’t scary. Not the same way Black kids are, at least:

Body Count were never given the benefit of the doubt. Nobody accepted that what they were singing about might be fiction. Instead, they were demonised by everyone from famous (white) actors to the (white) president and vice president of the United States.

Here’s the punchline.

The man who wrote “Cop Killer” – who was denounced by the President, who had the bomb squad called to his record label twice, who was treated as a genuine threat to American law enforcement – went on to play Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”... for more than two decades.

And Ice-T has always been clear that he doesn’t hate all cops. Just the bad ones. 

So for twenty years, he played one of the good ones every week.

While the world he’d written “Cop Killer” about kept producing new reasons to show the song still mattered.

In the wake of events like George Floyd’s death and recent controversies surrounding the Department of Homeland Security, Body Count’s message has never seemed so vital.

And yet, “Cop Killer” still – to this day – cannot be found on any streaming platform. Some live footage exists, but that’s it.

In 2017, Body Count released “No Lives Matter” – a direct response to the first waves of Black Lives Matter protests in the US. 

It must have been a strangely bittersweet moment for Ice-T. 

He’d been writing lyrics about corrupt cops for more than 25 years. And was still haunted by the violent backlash to one of the earliest Body Count songs.

But Body Count had never been about mindless provocation. Ice-T was singing about what Black Americans were seeing every day.

Mooseman, Body Count’s original bassist, was gunned down while visiting friends in his old neighborhood.

So while critics accused the band of glamorizing violence, they were actually reporting on the harsh reality of their environment – a reality that ultimately claimed the life of one of their own members.

"Cop Killer" was written to be a metal song. Yet somehow it started a movement.

The rage-as-reportage, the first-person fury, the idea that metal could be about your street and your reality… 

Yes, Body Count were playing metal. But – whether they intended it or not – they also became the catalyst for the “rap metal” and nu metal of the 90s.

And thirty years later, Ice-T still plays the song live, sometimes replacing a word here and there… 

The song keeps finding new political targets… The bad guys masquerading as good guys.

And that’s why – even though the original version still can’t be streamed on most platforms – the song refuses to die.

🤘 Horns up 🤘

Shane O’Neill
Editor-in-Chief
The Chug Media