Hip hop is filled with young artists who appear to live the Horatio Alger dream, ascending from impoverished urban neighborhoods to international fame and wealth.
But few of them have transformed themselves so often, and remained popular for so long, as Ice-T. An orphan turned family man and thief turned superstar, he famously went from singing about killing cops to playing a cop on the long-running and popular series “Law and Order SVU.” He chronicles his rise from poverty to fame in “ICE: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption – From South Central to Hollywood.”