Body Count

Body Count began as a thrash-metal side project for West Coast gangsta rapper Ice-T, but briefly eclipsed his hip-hop albums in notoriety for the song "Cop Killer." The song was initially released on Body Count's self-titled debut, then deleted when the rapper's label, Warner Brothers, caved in to public pressure from, among others, President George Herbert Walker Bush, who took the song far too literally. "Cop Killer" was deleted from subsequent versions of the album, replaced by a First Amendment rant by former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra.

It was much ado over one of the weaker songs on what is otherwise an album of darkly satiric and politically pointed commentary, sexist rants, and ghetto storytelling by Ice-T -- who was then at the height of his powers after two extraordinary hip-hop albums, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say and O.G. Original Gangster. Body Count is a middle-tier thrash band at best, but Ice-T is an en-tertaining front man, trafficking in outrage, whether imagining a tryst with a white supremacist's daughter in "KKK Bitch" or dissecting integration tensions in "There Goes the Neighborhood."

The novelty of a celebrity rapper mixing politics and speed metal wore off by the time of Born Dead and the stillborn Violent Demise. Lesser material focusing on locker-room juvenilia is partially to blame, and so is the band's relative lack of thunder when compared to nastier crews such as Slayer and Pantera. (GREG KOT)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide