From the Vault — originally published May 19, 2008. Some links, videos or prices may be out of date.
In a recent article in The Guradian Ice-T talks about video games and goes on about why he likes Grand Theft Auto games.
Ice-T: I love them. The best one is Grand Theft Auto, which is just fucking mayhem. I’m in the Scarface game, which teaches you how to sell drugs, and I was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I played a cracked-out rap star who had his lyrics stolen and the person that stole them became a star. So I went on crack and by the end of the game I get my reputation and my mansion back. You start off as a kid in South Central LA, you build up your rep and then you get a gang. It’s definitely some crazy shit.
The Vice City games are the worst shit ever – in a good way. It’s so intentionally wrong that you’ve got to get into it. You go, “Oh my God, if I’m out of money I just rob a liquor store.” Inside this world, all the things that you think about, you can do. Does that make you want to do it in real life? No. To me it diffuses it. People say video games make kids violent. I don’t think so. It can be an outlet for that aggression. It’s a masculine thing. Human beings have some weird blood lust, it roots back to us being animals. It’s ill, though.
Also in an interesting statement from the same article, Author and Journalist Nelson George states that Video games are more important than hip-hop. He likens video games to the new rock and roll. I must say I totally agree. Nelson George wrote “Hip Hop America” in 1998 and also was co-creator of the movie CB4 starring comedian Chris Rock. This is what Nelson George had to say:
Nelson George: Video games are more important than hip-hop. There’s no doubt about it. The violence and nihilism that everyone thinks is in hip-hop is pumped up about 18 times in video games. That’s really what’s driving young male culture, that’s really the new rock’n’roll. The funny thing about this debate is so many hip-hop critics are fixated on rap and not talking enough about video games, which aren’t a racially determinant form. Obviously those Grand Theft Auto guys were very canny because they tied in to Scarface, they tied in to hip-hop. I mean, Def Jam has a line of video games. Hip-hop became subsumed into the games.
But the games are different – they’re not folk statements. Hip-hop was a folk music up until the late 80s; I mean, it was music made by people for people. Even Run-DMC, you know, three million records was big for rap but it wasn’t big on an international level at the time. There were little labels pushing it. In the 90s bigger companies started getting in there and it began to change. I would say Interscope and what they did with Snoop, Tupac and Dr Dre really took it to a new level. With video games the relationship to the culture is different, they’re much more like movies. They’re a really interesting hybrid. The Grand Theft Auto dudes were all about figuring out how to tap into urban culture. Video games, like movies, take in so many disciplines. At the same time, it’s not a folk expression – at least, the way I understand it – of an individual.
