Ice T has come full circle. From run-ins with the law, he now is the law - at least in a fictional sense, playing a TV-show cop. He gives Jim Carroll his views on the new generation of rappers, getting a slice of the capitalist pie and the catastrophe that is George W. Bush's foreign policy

Life, as Ice T would tell you, is one strange mother. At the height of the Body Count brouhaha, when the Cop Killer track had police forces and such guardians of public morals as Tipper Gore and Charlton Heston calling on the board of Warner Brothers to strong-arm the rapper, the thought of Ice T as a police squadroom hero would have been hard to believe.

That was 1992, however, and even fortysomething rappers need to make a living when the hits dry up. These days, the original gangster is better known as an actor than a rapper and his star turn is as Detective Odafin Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the finest cops-and-lawyers show on the box. Even if Ice's acting is still a little on the ham side, his role as one of a group of hard-chaw detectives who believe all suspects are guilty until proven innocent is one some upholders of law and order might applaud.

"It's bullshit but it's not totally fake either," he says about the role. "If I can convince people that I am a cop, that must mean that I can act because I have never really been too fond of the police. As far as me playing a cop, I wouldn't mind playing a doctor or a cowboy, it doesn't really matter, it's just an acting role for me. So, for me to be able to pull it off, means I am a good actor."

It's a long stretch from the streets of Compton where Tracey Marlow became Ice T and put a life of pimping and hustling behind him to start rapping about living the life of a pimp and hustler. Early shots like The Coldest Rapper and Ya Don't Know saw him warming up his throat, before the Rhyme Pays and especially 1991's OG albums saw him laying down the Ice T West Coast hip-hop law. Over a sleazy, lowdown brew of skunky funk, Ice bragged about girls, guns and gangs and minted a template which became the hardcore hip-hop norm.

When Ice T listens to his old records today, he chuckles. "I sound just like the kids today." At the time, though, people were not used to what they were hearing. "It was new and it sounded savage to people. But as time goes on and you hear more people like me, it doesn't have the same edge, because it is not as new. You become a little bit more used to it." Yet he's critical of rappers who simply mouth off in the same way about the same themes that were his meat and potatoes. As far as Ice is concerned, they should have progressed by now. "They should take what I did and take it in a different direction," he says. "If they thought I sounded crazy, their job is to sound crazier. I wouldn't really want to hear anybody try to rap identical to me.

"If they took what I did and NWA did, and Ghetto Boys did and took it in their own direction, more power to them. I am always going to be a hardcore rap fan, just basically because of the content. I like people to say things when they rap and if they say the stuff that is interesting to me, I am into them."

What the new-school rappers have also taken onboard is Ice's devotion to the trappings of the trade. As the original bling-bling gangster, with album covers dripping with guns and gold, he believes his spiritual heirs are also figuring it out, just like he did back then. "The logical progression is a young rapper who lives with his mama and is not really concerned with money to begin with. As he becomes older, he learns that money is what rules the world.

"I am not mad at it, I don't see anything really wrong with it. I think that you can be capitalistic and go after the money, and then at the same time you can hold your politics too and try to do something with that money after you get it. I think it is just people maturing and growing up and realising that that's what the end game is. There is nothing wrong having a little bling bling. Everybody else in the world's got it, so why shouldn't rappers have some?"

Along with the other early gangsta rap exponents, Ice T found himself the target of all manner of attacks and tirades even before the Body Count furore. That he weathered these says much about how the rapper subtly reinvented himself and removed himself from hardcore rap's less savoury elements. Talking about the streets without actually living on the streets was how Ice survived - and thrived.

What wasn't to his liking was how Body Count and Cop Killer went out of control. "I didn't really enjoy the controversy because I am not a nut for controversy. I just think controversial, that's just how it ends up. I make records and when I hear it, I might go 'oh shit, somebody may be offended', but that's not why I do it. Warner Brothers, they did what they could to do to help me and hold me down and give me a place to make records, but it was so deeply political most people will never figure it out."

Body Count are currently in studio making a record called Murder For Hire. "We will see what the hell happens at the end of it," he says. For all Ice T's faux-modesty ("I always just lived my life and when the papers came to me I would just try to explain myself as best I could"), he remains one of the most media-savvy operators in the game. He seems to be on permanent standby as a TV talking head on all matters hip-hop and popular culture, while his tours of universities to lecture about civil rights and whatever else is exercising his mind are always popular.

"Media savvy? I don't really know. One day the media loves you and the next day the media hates you and that is just how it goes. You got to be very careful. I think a lot of rappers know how to deal with the press, but it's a double-edged sword. Hip-hop has its own press and if you read rap magazines, then you are going to see us in a good light. If you read square magazines that aren't into rap, they don't understand it so they are going to show it negatively. There's nothing you can really do about it. I mean, they show the president in a good light and a bad light. Once you are out there, it is up for grabs how people want to read you."

But Ice believes that President Bush, in particular, deserves his bad press. "What really makes me angry right now is the way Bush got the world so fucked up. They really have opened up a hornet's nest and I don't think there is any way they are going to clean it up. It is just payback for a lot of the things that the United States have done overseas. The old American way is not working. Just go in and show a force of power? It doesn't work. I think I am more pissed off at global situations than I am at urban situations right now because it's really pretty bad."

Ice T plays the Red Box, Dublin on July 18th and Crawdaddy, Dublin on July 20th