Rapper and actor Ice-T paid a visit to children at Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club to host a mini rap school for a few hours and talk about his experiences coming from the streets and making it big.
Ice-T, who currently stars on television’s Law&Order S.V.U., visited Kips Bay’s 1930 Randall Avenue location on Thursday, February 5 and hosted a session in which he critiqued local young people’s raps after taking a tour of the facility, which he said was very impressive.
The visit also brought Tupperware Brands chairman and C.E.O. Rick Goings to the club for young people. Tupperware sponsored Ice-T’s trip to the club. Goings is cehairman Emeritus of the national Boys & Girls Clubs, and Kips Bay was the first club that he visited when he began working with the organization 25 years ago.
“These kids are getting to see a man who lived the street life, and is now a successful performer and businessman,” said Daniel Quintero, executive director of Kips Bay.
Ice-T saw everything that the facility has to offer, including a swimming pool and ice-skating rink. When he came back to the dance studio, he encouraged the young people present to pursue their dreams in the face of adversity.
Ice-T told his life’s story. After a stint in the military, and one on the street, Ice-T said that he became interested in hip-hop music while working as a dee-jay. He began to perfect rap as an art form by creating new and interesting rhymes which made him extremely successful. Ice-T even spoke of the difficulties of career transitions.
“I think that when you get the opportunity to do a dream job – you can’t beat it,” Ice-T said to the children. “I was nervous when I first started acting, with New Jack City, because I was stepping out of one career – music – and into another.”
Ice-T said that things changed after his first successful hip-hop record was released in the 1980s because not only did his friends begin to treat him differently, but there was also added pressure to produce something just as good when he went back into the recording studio.
Ice-T said that he is someone the children can relate to and learn from as some see parts of their own story in his. Ice-T offered practical advice to the kids based on his hard fought personal battles to beat the streets and become successful.
“The key [to being successful] is to pick a job that you enjoy doing,” Ice-T said to the crowd. “There is an illusion that there are people who don’t work for a living. Pick your dream – something you feel you would like to do and just focus on that. Have a plan B, plan C, and so on. Maybe plan B is something you do before plan A works.”
For more information on Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, visit them on the web at www.kipsbay.org.
