Audio Interview: Ice-T Talks Bloodrunners, Bill Paxton, Body Count… and Leprechaun!

Rap legend and actor Ice-T dishes on his many film roles and his new album in this exclusive audio interview

Iconic rap pioneer Ice-T is an artist who has led many lives and a man who always follows his muse, for better or worse. After being instrumental in inventing the sub-genre known as “gangsta rap,” Ice-T parlayed his profile as a musician into that of a noted actor in films like Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City, Walter Hill’s Trespass, Ernest Dickerson’s Surviving the Game, Rachel Talalay’s Tank Girl and, most prominently, with his long-running role on TV’s hit series Law & Order: SVU.

Now, the “Cop Killer” crooner is turning to terror with the outrageously-entertaining bootlegging blood-sprayer Bloodrunners, a low-budget, high concept thriller about Prohibition-era bootleggers that are skipping the booze and smuggling human blood. Because they are, after all, vampires…

Bloodrunners is written and directed by Dan Lantz (Blind Love, Felix Melman) and centers on a turf war between a crooked cop and a power-hungry ghoul (the O.G. himself, clearly having a blast) over a small town soaked in illegal hooch during the height of Prohibition. Michael McFadden (The Networker) headlines as a cop living large on looking the other way as booze flows through his protectorate. When he discovers that Chesterfield, the owner of the latest speakeasy, has a thirst for warm blood as well as cold hard cash, he must find a way to save his town before it dries up.

Bloodrunners is available now to rent or own across the US and Canada on iTunes, Steam, Google Play, Xbox, Playstation and various cable platforms, including Comcast, Dish, Rogers and Shaw.

In honor of its release, we got Ice-T on the phone to talk not only about Bloodrunners but about many of our favorite Ice-T film roles, his memories of his friend, the late Bill Paxton, as well as the release of the new Body Count album, Ice-T’s revered hard rap/metal outfit.

Here is the exclusive — and often hilarious — audio interview in its entirety. And yes, we even talked about Leprechaun in the Hood. We don’t mess around.