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Ice-T

Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T (or Ice T), is an American rapper and actor. He is active in both hip hop and heavy metal. Ice-T began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays. The following year, he founded the record label Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "") and released another album, Power (1988), which would go platinum. He also released several other albums that went gold, including The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! (1989), O.G. Original Gangster (1991) and Home Invasion (1993).

Ice-T co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count in 1990, which he introduced on O.G. Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count". The band released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", the lyrics of which discussed killing police officers. He asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his follow-up solo album, Home Invasion, was released through Priority Records. Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s and one in the 2000s before focusing on both his acting career and Body Count, who have released seven studio albums to date, the latest being 2020's Carnivore.

As an actor, Ice-T played small parts in the films Breakin (1984) and its sequels, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo and Rappin (1984 and 1985 respectively), before his major role debut, starring as police detective Scotty Appleton in New Jack City (1991). He received top billing for his role in Surviving the Game (1994) and continued to appear in small roles in TV series and other films throughout the 1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD detective/sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, making him the longest-running male series actor in history, according to Deadline. A reality television show titled Ice Loves Coco ran for three seasons (2011–2013) on E!, featuring the home life of Ice-T and his wife Coco Austin. In 2018, he began hosting the true crime documentary In Ice Cold Blood on the Oxygen cable channel, which ran for three seasons.

Early life
Tracy Lauren Marrow, the son of Solomon and Alice Marrow, was born in Newark, New Jersey on February 16, 1958. Solomon was African-American and Alice was from a Louisiana Creole background. For decades, Solomon worked as a conveyor belt mechanic at the Rapistan Conveyor Company. When Marrow was a child, his family moved to upscale Summit, New Jersey. The first time race played a major part in Marrow's life was at the age of seven, when he became aware of the racism leveled by his white friends towards black children. Marrow surmised that he escaped similar treatment because they thought that he was white due to his lighter skin. Relaying this incident to his mother, she told him, "Honey, people are stupid"; her advice and this incident taught Marrow to control the way the negativity of others affected him.

His mother died of a heart attack when he was in third grade. Solomon raised Marrow as a single father for four years, with help from a housekeeper. Marrow's first experience with illicit activity occurred after a bicycle that his father bought him for Christmas was stolen. After Marrow told his father, Solomon shrugged, "Well, then, you ain't got no bike". Marrow stole parts from bicycles and assembled "three or four weird-looking, brightly-painted bikes" from the parts; his father either did not notice or never acknowledged this. When Marrow was thirteen years old, Solomon also died of a heart attack.

Following his father's death, the orphaned Marrow briefly lived with a nearby aunt, then was sent to live with his other aunt and her husband in View Park-Windsor Hills, an upper middle-class Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles. While his cousin Earl was preparing to leave for college, Marrow shared a bedroom with him. Earl was a fan of rock music and listened only to the local rock radio stations; sharing a room with him sparked Marrow's interest in heavy metal music.

High school, early criminal activity, military service
Marrow moved to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles when he was in the eighth grade. He attended Palms Junior High, which was predominantly made up of white students, and included black students who traveled by bus from South Central to attend. He then attended Crenshaw High School, which was almost entirely made up of black students.

Marrow stood out from most of his friends because he did not drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or use drugs. During Marrow's time in high school, gangs became more prevalent in the Los Angeles school system. Students who belonged to the Crips and Bloods gangs attended Crenshaw, and fought in the school's hallways. Marrow, while never an actual gang member, was affiliated with the former. Marrow began reading the novels of Iceberg Slim, which he memorized and recited to his friends, who enjoyed hearing the excerpts and told him, "Yo, kick some more of that by Ice, T", giving Marrow his famous nickname. Marrow and other Crips wrote and performed "Crip Rhymes".

His music career started with the band of the singing group The Precious Few of Crenshaw High School. Marrow and his group opened the show, dancing to a live band. The singers were Thomas Barnes, Ronald Robinson and Lapekas Mayfield.

In 1975, at the age of seventeen, Marrow began receiving Social Security benefits resulting from the death of his father and used the money to rent an apartment for $90 a month. He sold cannabis and stole car stereos to earn extra cash, but he was not making enough to support his pregnant girlfriend. After his daughter was born, Marrow enlisted in the United States Army in October 1977. Following basic training, Marrow was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division. During his time in the army Marrow was involved with a group of soldiers charged with the theft of a rug. While awaiting trial, he received a $2,500 bonus check and went absent without leave (AWOL), returning a month later, after the rug had been returned. Marrow received a non-judicial punishment as a consequence of his dereliction of duty.

During his spell in the Army, Marrow became interested in hip hop music. He heard The Sugarhill Gang's newly released single "Rapper's Delight" (1979), which inspired him to perform his own raps over the instrumentals of this and other early hip-hop records. The music, however, did not fit his lyrics or form of delivery.

When he was stationed in Hawaii (where prostitution was not a heavily prosecuted crime) as a squad leader at Schofield Barracks, Marrow met a pimp named Mac. Mac admired that Marrow could quote Iceberg Slim, and he taught Marrow how to be a pimp himself. Marrow was also able to purchase stereo equipment cheaply in Hawaii, including two Technics turntables, a mixer, and large speakers. Once equipped, he then began to learn turntablism and rapping.

Marrow learned from his commanding officer that he could receive an early honorable discharge because he was a single father. Taking advantage of this, Marrow was discharged as a Private First Class (PFC - E3) in December 1979 after serving for two years and two months.

During an episode of The Adam Carolla Podcast that aired on June 6, 2012, Marrow claimed that after being discharged from the Army, he began a career as a bank robber. Marrow claimed he and some associates began conducting take-over bank robberies "like [in the film] Heat". Marrow then elaborated, explaining, "Only punks go for the drawer, we gotta go for the safe." Marrow also stated he was glad the United States justice system has statutes of limitations, which had likely expired when Marrow admitted to his involvement in multiple Class 1 Felonies in the early-to-mid 1980s.

In July 2010, Marrow was mistakenly arrested. A month later when Marrow attended court, the charges were dropped and the prosecution stated "there had been a clerical error when the rapper was arrested". Marrow gave some advice to young people who think going to jail is a mark of integrity, saying, "Street credibility has nothing to do with going to jail, it has everything to do with staying out."

Early career (1980–1981)
After leaving the Army, Marrow wanted to stay away from gang life and violence and instead make a name for himself as a DJ. As a tribute to Iceberg Slim, Marrow adopted the stage name Ice-T. While performing as a DJ at parties, he received more attention for his rapping, which led Ice-T to pursue a career as a rapper. After breaking up with his girlfriend Caitlin Boyd, he returned to a life of crime and robbed jewelry stores with his high school friends. Ice-T's raps later described how he and his friends pretended to be customers to gain access before smashing the display glass with baby sledgehammers.

Ice-T's friends Al P. and Sean E. Sean went to prison. Al P. was caught in 1982 and sent to prison for robbing a high-end jewelry store in Laguna Niguel for $2.5 million in jewelry. Sean was arrested for possession of not only cannabis, which Sean sold, but also material stolen by Ice-T. Sean took the blame and served two years in prison. Ice-T stated that he owed a debt of gratitude to Sean because his prison time allowed him to pursue a career as a rapper. Concurrently, he wound up in a car accident and was hospitalized as a John Doe because he did not carry any form of identification due to his criminal activities. After being discharged from the hospital, he decided to abandon the criminal lifestyle and pursue a professional career rapping. Two weeks after being released from the hospital, he won an open mic competition judged by Kurtis Blow at the Carolina West nightclub. According to Michael Khalfani known as Disco Daddy, Ice-T won the first week of the competition under the name of DJ Tracy, but got beaten by Disco Daddy the second week, which lead to the name change of Ice-T (Khalfani got signed to Rappers Rapp Records).

Professional career (1982–present)

In 1982, Ice-T met producer Willie Strong from Saturn Records. In 1983, Strong recorded Ice-T's first single, "Cold Wind Madness", also known as "The Coldest Rap", an electro hip-hop record that became an underground success, becoming popular even though radio stations did not play it due to the song's explicit lyrics about taking a woman to the Snooty Fox motel in Los Angeles. That same year, Ice-T released "Body Rock", another electro hip-hop single that found popularity in clubs. In 1984, Ice-T was a featured rapper on "Reckless", a single by DJ Chris "The Glove" Taylor and (co-producer) David Storrs that gained widespread popularity as a featured track via the motion picture Breakin' and its soundtrack album. This song was almost immediately followed up with a sequel entitled "Reckless Rivalry (Combat)", which was featured in the Breakin' sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, however, it was never featured on the soundtrack album and was only released as a single on Taxidermi Records. In 1985, he appeared in the film Rappin' by performing two verses of his track Killers, which was his first political rap. Ice later recorded the songs "Ya Don't Quit" and "Dog'n the Wax (Ya Don't Quit-Part II)" with Unknown DJ, who provided a Run–D.M.C.-like sound for the songs.

Ice-T received further inspiration as an artist from Schoolly D's gangsta rap single "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?", which he heard in a club. Ice-T enjoyed the single's sound and delivery, as well as its vague references to gang life, although the real life gang, Park Side Killers, was not named in the song.

Ice-T decided to adopt Schoolly D's style, and wrote the lyrics to his first gangsta rap song, "6 in the Mornin'", in his Hollywood apartment, and created a minimal beat with a Roland TR-808. He compared the sound of the song, which was recorded as a B-side on the single "Dog'n The Wax", to that of the Beastie Boys. The A-side caused some controversy for the lyrics, which were unusually violent by the standards of hip hop at the time. The B-side was more successful and was later released as an extended rap on his first album. He intentionally did not represent any particular gang, and wore a mixture of red and blue clothing and shoes to avoid antagonizing gang-affiliated listeners, who debated his true affiliation. Ice-T finally landed a deal with a major label Sire Records. When label founder and president Seymour Stein heard his demo, he said Ice-T sounded like Bob Dylan. Shortly after, he released his debut album Rhyme Pays in 1987 supported by DJ Evil E, DJ Aladdin and producer Afrika Islam, who helped create the mainly party-oriented sound. The record wound up being certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. That same year, he recorded the title theme song for Dennis Hopper's Colors, a film about inner-city gang life in Los Angeles. His next album Power was released in 1988, under his own label Rhyme Syndicate, and it was a more assured and impressive record, earning him strong reviews and his second gold record. Released in 1989, The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! established his popularity by matching excellent abrasive music with narrative and commentative lyrics. In the same year, he appeared on Hugh Harris' single "Alice".

In 1991, he released his album O.G. Original Gangster. On OG, he introduced his heavy metal band Body Count in a track of the same name. Ice-T toured with Body Count on the first annual Lollapalooza concert tour in 1991, gaining him appeal among middle-class teenagers and fans of alternative music genres. The album Body Count was released in March 1992. For his appearance on the heavily collaborative track "Back on the Block", a composition by jazz musician Quincy Jones that "attempt[ed] to bring together black musical styles from jazz to soul to funk to rap", Ice-T won a Grammy Award for the Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, an award shared by others who worked on the track including Jones and fellow jazz musician Ray Charles.

Controversy later surrounded Body Count over its song "Cop Killer". The rock song was intended to speak from the viewpoint of a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops. Ice-T's rock song infuriated government officials, the National Rifle Association of America, and various police advocacy groups. Consequently, Time Warner Music refused to release Ice-T's upcoming album Home Invasion because of the controversy surrounding "Cop Killer". Ice-T suggested that the furor over the song was an overreaction, telling journalist Chuck Philips "...they've done movies about nurse killers and teacher killers and student killers. Arnold Schwarzenegger blew away dozens of cops as the Terminator. But I don't hear anybody complaining about that". In the same interview, Ice-T suggested to Philips that the misunderstanding of Cop Killer, the misclassification of it as a rap song (not a rock song), and the attempts to censor it had racial overtones: "The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer".

Ice-T split amicably with Sire/Warner Bros. Records after a dispute over the artwork of the album Home Invasion. He then reactivated Rhyme Syndicate and formed a deal with Priority Records for distribution. Priority released Home Invasion in the spring of 1993. The album peaked at No. 9 on Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and at No. 14 on the Billboard 200, spawning several singles including "Gotta Lotta Love", "I Ain't New Ta This" and "99 Problems" – which would later inspire Jay-Z to record a version with new lyrics in 2003. In 2003 he released the single "Beat of Life" with Sandra Nasić, Trigga tha Gambler and DJ Tomekk and placed in the German charts.

Ice-T had also collaborated with certain other heavy metal bands during this time period. For the film Judgment Night, he did a duet with Slayer on the track "Disorder". In 1995, Ice-T made a guest performance on Forbidden by Black Sabbath. Another album of his, VI – Return of the Real, was released in 1996, followed by The Seventh Deadly Sin in 1999.

His first rap album since 1999, Gangsta Rap, was released on October 31, 2006. The album's cover, which "shows [Ice-T] lying on his back in bed with his ravishing wife's ample posterior in full view and one of her legs coyly draped over his private parts", was considered to be too suggestive for most retailers, many of which were reluctant to stock the album. Some reviews of the album were unenthusiastic, as many had hoped for a return to the political raps of Ice-T's most successful albums. Ice-T appears in the film Gift. One of the last scenes includes Ice-T and Body Count playing with Jane's Addiction in a version of the Sly and the Family Stone song "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey".

Besides fronting his own band and rap projects, Ice-T has also collaborated with other hard rock and metal bands, such as Icepick, Motörhead, Slayer, Megadeth, Pro-Pain, and Six Feet Under. He has also covered songs by hardcore punk bands such as the Exploited, Jello Biafra, and Black Flag. Ice-T made an appearance at Insane Clown Posse's Gathering of the Juggalos (2008 edition). Ice-T was also a judge for the 7th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists. His 2012 film Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap features a who's who of underground and mainstream rappers.

In November 2011, Ice-T announced via Twitter that he was in the process of collecting beats for his next LP which was expected sometime during 2012, but, the album has not been released. A new Body Count album, Bloodlust, was released in 2017. After the release of the album, responding to an interview question asking if he's "done with rap", he answered "I don't know" and noted that he's "really leaning more toward EDM right now". Body Count received their second Grammy nomination and later won the award at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021 for "Best Metal Performance" with their song "Bum-Rush" from the album Carnivore.

In July 2019, Ice-T released his first solo hip hop track in 10 years, titled "Feds in My Rearview". The track is the first in a trilogy, with the second track, "Too Old for the Dumb Shit", described as a prequel to "Feds in My Rearview", and released in September 2019. Ice-T was also featured on the 2020 hip hop posse cut "The Slayers Club" alongside R.A. the Rugged Man, Brand Nubian and others.

Ice-T performed at New Year's Eve Toast & Roast 2021, Fox broadcast.

Television and film
Ice-T was prominently featured as both a rapper and a breakdancer in Breakin' 'n' Enterin' (1983), a documentary about the early West Coast hip hop scene.

Ice-T's first film appearances were in the motion pictures, Breakin' (1984), and its sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984). These films were released before Ice-T released his first LP, although he appears on the soundtrack to Breakin'. He has since stated he considers the films and his own performance in them to be "wack".

In 1991, he embarked on a serious acting career, portraying police detective Scotty Appleton in Mario Van Peebles' action thriller New Jack City, gang leader Odessa (alongside Denzel Washington and John Lithgow) in Ricochet (1991), gang leader King James in Trespass (1992), followed by a notable lead role performance in Surviving the Game (1994), in addition to many supporting roles, such as J-Bone in Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and the marsupial mutant T-Saint in Tank Girl (1995). He was also interviewed in the Brent Owens documentary Pimps Up, Ho's Down, in which he claims to have had an extensive pimping background before getting into rap. He is quoted as saying "once you max something out, it ain't no fun no more. I couldn't really get no farther." He goes on to explain his pimping experience gave him the ability to get into new businesses. "I can't act, I really can't act, I ain't no rapper, it's all game. I'm just working these niggas." Later he raps at the Players Ball.

In 1993, Ice-T, along with other rappers and the three Yo! MTV Raps hosts Ed Lover, Doctor Dré, and Fab 5 Freddy starred in the comedy Who's the Man?, directed by Ted Demme. In the film, he is a drug dealer who gets really frustrated when someone calls him by his real name, "Chauncey", rather than his street name, "Nighttrain".

In 1995, Ice-T had a recurring role as vengeful drug dealer Danny Cort on the television series New York Undercover, co-created by Dick Wolf. His work on the series earned him the 1996 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In 1997, he co-created the short-lived series Players, produced by Wolf. This was followed by a role as pimp Seymour "Kingston" Stockton in Exiled: A Law & Order Movie (1998). These collaborations led Wolf to add Ice-T to the cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Since 2000, he has portrayed Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, a former undercover narcotics officer transferred to the Special Victims Unit. In 2002, the NAACP awarded Ice-T with a second Image Award, again for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, for his work on Law & Order: SVU.

Around 1995, Ice-T co-presented a UK-produced magazine television series on black culture, Baadasss TV.

In 1997, Ice-T had a pay-per-view special titled Ice-T's Extreme Babes which appeared on Action PPV, formerly owned by BET Networks.

In 1999, Ice-T starred in the HBO film Stealth Fighter as a United States Naval Aviator who fakes his own death, steals an F-117 stealth fighter, and threatens to destroy United States military bases. He also acted in the film Sonic Impact, released the same year.

Ice-T made an appearance on the comedy television series Chappelle's Show as himself presenting the award for "Player Hater of the Year" at the "Player-Haters Ball", a parody of his own appearance at the Players Ball. He was dubbed the "Original Player Hater".

Beyond Tough, a 2002 documentary series, aired on Discovery Channel about the world's most dangerous and intense professions, such as alligator wrestlers and Indy 500 pit crews, was hosted by Ice-T.

In 2007, Ice-T appeared as a celebrity guest star on the MTV sketch comedy show Short Circuitz. Also in late 2007, he appeared in the short-music film Hands of Hatred, which can be found online.

Ice-T was interviewed for the Cannibal Corpse retrospective documentary Centuries of Torment, as well as appearing in Chris Rock's 2009 documentary Good Hair, in which he reminisced about going to school in hair curlers.

A 2016 advertisement for GEICO features Ice-T behind a lemonade stand run by children. When people ask if it is Ice-T, the actor yells back, "No, it's lemonade!"

In 2020, Ice-T competed on The Masked Singer spin-off The Masked Dancer where he portrayed "Disco Ball" and was the first to be eliminated.

Voice acting
Ice-T's voice acting roles include Madd Dogg in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as well as Agent Cain in Sanity: Aiken's Artifact. He also appears as himself in Def Jam: Fight for NY and UFC: Tapout fighting video games. He also voiced the character Aaron Griffin in the video game Gears of War 3. Marrow also made an appearance in the 2019 video game Borderlands 3, in which he voices the character of BALEX. On August 22, 2023, it was revealed at Gamescom 2023 that he would be voicing the contractor, Mac in Payday 3.

Podcasting
On December 27, 2013, Ice-T announced that he was entering podcasting in a deal with the Paragon Collective. Ice-T co-hosts the Ice-T: Final Level podcast with his longtime friend, Mick Benzo (known as Zulu Beatz on Sirius XM). They discuss relevant issues, films, video games, and do a behind the scenes of Law & Order: SVU segment with featured guests from the entertainment world. The show will release new episodes bi-weekly. Guests have included Jim Norton. Ice-T released his first episode on January 7 to many accolades.

Reality television
On October 20, 2006, Ice-T's Rap School aired and was a reality television show on VH1. It was a spin-off of the British reality show Gene Simmons' Rock School, which also aired on VH1. In Rap School, rapper/actor Ice-T teaches eight teens from York Preparatory School in New York called the "York Prep Crew" ("Y.P. Crew" for short). Each week, Ice-T gives them assignments and they compete for an imitation gold chain with a microphone on it. On the season finale on November 17, 2006, the group performed as an opening act for Public Enemy.

On June 12, 2011, E! reality show Ice Loves Coco debuted. The show is mostly about his relationship with his wife, Nicole "Coco" Austin.

In popular media

 * In the Rick and Morty episode "Get Schwifty", "Ice-T", voiced by show creator Dan Harmon, is portrayed as secretly being alien royalty exiled to Earth, whose natural shape is a letter T made of water. Ice-T reacted on Twitter by saying "This happens with cartoonists after lots of drugs…. Fn Crazy!!". Despite this, he would later voice the character Magma-Q, the fictional father of Ice-T, in the Rick and Morty episode Rise of the Numbericons.
 * Stand-up comedian John Mulaney dedicates a long segment on his comedy special New in Town to the humorous expositional nature of Ice-T's role on Special Victims Unit, saying that his function on the show is to be perpetually amazed by bad things, despite being in a sex crimes unit.

Style and influence

Ice-T cites writer Iceberg Slim and rapper Schoolly D as influences, with Iceberg Slim's novels guiding his skills as a lyricist. His favorite heavy rock acts are Edgar Winter, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. His hip hop albums helped shape gangsta rap, with music journalists tracing works of artists such as Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Eminem and N.W.A to "6 in the Mornin'.

A love of rock led Ice to use guitar in his albums, to provide his songs with edge and power, and to make his raps harder. He drew on the fusion of rock and hip hop by Rick Rubin-produced acts such as Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J, who featured rock samples in their songs.

Body Count – whose 1992 debut album Ice described as a "rock album with a rap mentality" – is described as paving the way for the success of rap rock fusions by acts like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit. However, Ice-T states that the band's style does not fuse the two genres, and that Body Count is solely a rock band.

In Hip Hop Connection, Ice listed his favorite rap albums:

Personal life

On March 20, 1976, Marrow's high school girlfriend Adrienne gave birth to their daughter LeTesha Marrow, and they continued attending high school while raising her. While filming Breakin' in 1984, he met his second girlfriend Darlene Ortiz, who was at the club where the film was shot. They began a relationship and Ortiz was featured on the covers of Rhyme Pays and Power. Ice-T and Ortiz had a son, Ice Tracy Marrow Jr., on November 23, 1991; Ice Marrow, aka "Little Ice", became a backing vocalist with Body Count in time for the recording of their album Carnivore.

Ice-T married swimsuit model Nicole "Coco" Austin in January 2002. In celebration of their impending ninth wedding anniversary, the couple renewed their wedding vows on June 4, 2011. As of 2006, they owned a penthouse apartment in North Bergen, New Jersey. In 2012, they were building a five-bedroom house in Edgewater, New Jersey, that was expected to be completed by the end of the year. In 2015, the couple had their first child together, a daughter.

Ice-T has stated on numerous occasions that he is a teetotaler, and lives a straight edge lifestyle. He is a long time practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and boxing, and is a big fan of the UFC.

Activism
During the popularity of Public Enemy, Ice-T was closely associated with the band and his recordings of the time showed a similar political viewpoint. He was referred to as "The Soldier of the Highest Degree" in the booklet for Fear of a Black Planet and mentioned on the track "Reggie Jax". Ice-T's track This One's For Me included a defence of Professor Griff after the antisemitism controversy and attacked other rappers for not speaking out in his defence. At the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for Ice-T, Chuck D appeared on stage alongside his long-term friend.

Ice-T also collaborated with fellow vocalist and anti-censorship campaigner Jello Biafra on his album The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say!. He and Biafra appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1990 to debate Tipper Gore on censorship in music. After the controversy of the Body Count song Cop Killer, Ice-T became an icon for free-speech campaigners, which led to a doubling in album sales. The song was condemned by both George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle during the 1992 United States presidential election. When he decided to withdraw the song from his album, he replaced it with a metal version of his rap Freedom of Speech. A 2004 Guardian article wrote, "He's toured universities lecturing on first amendment rights and civil liberties and is vocal about the billions wasted on the Iraq war. He insists, however, he'd never get involved in politics."

The last track of OG Original Gangster condemned both the Gulf War and mass incarceration. In 2017, Ice-T signed a petition to Congress for criminal-justice reform.

His 1994 book, The Ice Opinion, was largely focused on his view on politics. Writing in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, he was one of the only rappers who criticised the targeting of Koreans by some Black rioters.

On June 5, 2008, Ice-T joked that he would be voting for John McCain in the 2008 American elections, speculating that his past affiliation with Body Count could hurt Barack Obama's chances if he endorsed him, so he would choose instead to ruin McCain's campaign by saying he supported him. In 2015, Ice-T said that he admired Obama "just for the simple fact he took the shot and went all the way to be president" and included Obama in the list of people who he would like to have for a dream dinner party.

On September 22, 2022, Ice-T narrated an advertisement for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

LL Cool J
Ice-T had a feud with LL Cool J in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Apparently, this was instigated by LL's claim to be "the baddest rapper in the history of rap itself". Ice-T recorded disses against LL on his 1988 album Power. On the album was the track, "I'm Your Pusher", in which a rap music addict declines to buy an LL Cool J record. In the book Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies, Ice-T said that the song "Girls L.G.B.N.A.F." was also intended as a diss to LL Cool J, by making a crude song to contrast with the love songs that LL was making at the time.

On LL's response, "To da Break of Dawn" in 1990, he dissed Kool Moe Dee (whose feud with LL was far more publicized) as well as MC Hammer. He then devoted the third verse of the song to dissing Ice-T, mocking his rap ability ("take your rhymes around the corner to rap rehab"), his background ("before you rapped, you was a downtown car thief"), and his style ("a brother with a perm deserves to get burned"). He also suggested that the success of Power was due to the appearance of Ice-T's girlfriend Darlene on the album cover. Ice-T appeared to have ignored the insults and he had also defended LL Cool J after his arrest in the song "Freedom of Speech".

In August 2012, Ice-T said that the rivalry was "never serious" and that he needed a nemesis to create "an exciting dispute".

Soulja Boy
In June 2008, on DJ Cisco's Urban Legend mixtape, Ice-T criticized Soulja Boy (whose name is DeAndre Way) for "killing hip hop" and called his song "Crank That" "garbage" compared to the works of other hip-hop artists such as Rakim, Das EFX, Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube. One of the comments exchanged was Ice-T telling Way to "eat a dick". The two then traded numerous videos back and forth over the Internet. These videos included a cartoon and video of Ice-T dancing on Way's behalf and an apology, but reiteration of his feelings that Way's music "sucks", on Ice-T's behalf. Musician Kanye West defended Way saying, "He came from the 'hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song".

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * Rhyme Pays (1987)
 * Power (1988)
 * The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say (1989)
 * O.G. Original Gangster (1991)
 * Home Invasion (1993)
 * Ice-T VI: Return of the Real (1996)
 * The Seventh Deadly Sin (1999)
 * Gangsta Rap (2006)

 * with Body Count
 * Body Count (1992)
 * Born Dead (1994)
 * Violent Demise: The Last Days (1997)
 * Murder 4 Hire (2006)
 * Manslaughter (2014)
 * Bloodlust (2017)
 * Carnivore (2020)

 * Collaboration albums
 * Breaking and Entering with The Radio Crew (1983)
 * Rhyme Syndicate Comin' Through with (1988)
 * Pimp to Eat with Analog Brothers (2000)
 * Repossession with SMG (2004)
 * Urban Legends with Black Ice (2008)
 * The Foundation Album (Legends Recording Group) with various artists (2019)
 * Uncut with Afrika Islam (2021)

Awards and nominations

 * Sources:

title: Ice-T


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Iron Age

The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progressing to protohistory (before written history). In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age (subdivided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East. Still, they now include other parts of the Old World (the indigenous cultures of the New World did not develop an iron economy before 1500).

Although meteoric iron has been used for millennia in many regions, the beginning of the Iron Age is defined locally around the world by archaeological convention when the production of smelted iron (especially steel tools and weapons) replaces their bronze equivalents in common use.

In Anatolia and the Caucasus, or Southeast Europe, the Iron Age began during the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC). In the Ancient Near East, this transition occurred simultaneously with the Late Bronze Age collapse, during the 12th century BC (1200–1100 BC). The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia between the 12th and 11th century BC. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe was somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe was not reached until about the start of the 5th century BC (500 BC).

The Iron Age in India is stated as beginning with the ironworking Painted Grey Ware culture, dating from the 15th century BC, through to the reign of Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. The term "Iron Age" in the archaeology of South, East, and Southeast Asia is more recent and less common than for Western Eurasia. Africa did not have an universal "Bronze Age", and many areas transitioned directly from stone to iron. Some archaeologists believe that iron metallurgy was developed in sub-Saharan Africa independently from Eurasia and neighbouring parts of Northeast Africa as early as 2000 BC.

The concept of the Iron Age ending with the beginning of the written historiographical record has not generalized well, as written language and steel use have developed at different times in different areas across the archaeological record. For instance, in China, written history started before iron smelting began, so the term is used infrequently for the archaeology of China. For the Ancient Near East, the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire c. 550 BC is used traditionally and still usually as an end date; later dates are considered historical according to the record by Herodotus despite considerable written records now being known from well back into the Bronze Age. In Central and Western Europe, the Roman conquests of the 1st century BC serve as marking the end of the Iron Age. The Germanic Iron Age of Scandinavia is considered to end c. AD 800, with the beginning of the Viking Age.

History of the concept
The three-age method of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages was first used for the archaeology of Europe during the first half of the 19th century, and by the latter half of the 19th century, it had been extended to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Its name harks back to the mythological "Ages of Man" of Hesiod. As an archaeological era, it was first introduced to Scandinavia by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen during the 1830s. By the 1860s, it was embraced as a useful division of the "earliest history of mankind" in general and began to be applied in Assyriology. The development of the now-conventional periodization in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East was developed during the 1920s and 1930s.

Definition of "iron"
Meteoric iron, a natural iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. The earliest-known meteoric iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh in Lower Egypt, having been shaped by careful hammering.

The characteristic of an Iron Age culture is the mass production of tools and weapons made not just of found iron, but from smelted steel alloys with an added carbon content. Only with the capability of the production of carbon steel does ferrous metallurgy result in tools or weapons that are harder and lighter than bronze.

Smelted iron appears sporadically in the archeological record from the middle Bronze Age. Whilst terrestrial iron is abundant naturally, temperatures above 1250 °C are required to smelt it, impractical to achieve with the technology available commonly until the end of the second millennium BC. In contrast, the components of bronze—tin with a melting point of 231.9 °C and copper with a relatively moderate melting point of 1,085 °C—were within the capabilities of Neolithic kilns, which date back to 6000 BC and were able to produce temperatures greater than 900 °C.

In addition to specially designed furnaces, ancient iron production required the development of complex procedures for the removal of impurities, the regulation of the admixture of carbon, and the invention of hot-working to achieve a useful balance of hardness and strength in steel. The use of steel has also been regulated by the economics of the metallurgical advancements.

Earliest evidence
The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük in modern-day Turkey, dated to 2200–2000 BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia". Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities about 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (≈1400–1200 BC).

Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron-working in the Ganges Valley in India have been dated tentatively to 1800 BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC". By the Middle Bronze Age increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

African sites are revealing dates as early as 2000–1200 BC. However, some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3000 and 2500 BC, with evidence existing for early iron metallurgy in parts of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Central Africa, from as early as around 2,000 BC. The Nok culture of Nigeria may have practiced iron smelting from as early as 1000 BC, while the nearby Djenné-Djenno culture of the Niger Valley in Mali shows evidence of iron production from c. 250 BC. Iron technology across much of sub-Saharan Africa has an African origin dating to before 2000 BC. These findings confirm the independent invention of iron smelting in sub-Saharan Africa.

Beginning

Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of large-scale global iron production about 1200 BC, marking the end of the Bronze Age. The Iron Age in Europe is often considered as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East.

Anthony Snodgrass suggests that a shortage of tin and trade disruptions in the Mediterranean about 1300 BC forced metalworkers to seek an alternative to bronze. Many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during that time, and more widespread use of iron resulted in improved steel-making technology and lower costs. When tin became readily available again, iron was cheaper, stronger and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently.

In Central and Western Europe, the Iron Age lasted from c. 800 BC to c. 1 BC, beginning in pre-Roman Iron Age Northern Europe in c. 600 BC, and reaching Northern Scandinavian Europe about c. 500 BC.

The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is considered to last from c. 1200 BC (the Bronze Age collapse) to c. 550 BC (or 539 BC), roughly the beginning of historiography with Herodotus, marking the end of the proto-historical period.

In China, because writing was developed first, there is no recognizable prehistoric period characterized by ironworking, and the Bronze Age China transitions almost directly into the Qin dynasty of imperial China. "Iron Age" in the context of China is used sometimes for the transitional period of c. 900 BC to 100 BC during which ferrous metallurgy was present even if not dominant.

Ancient Near East
The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun after the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia, the Caucasus or Southeast Europe during the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC). The earliest bloomery smelting of iron is found at Tell Hammeh, Jordan about 930 BC (determined from 14C dating).

The Early Iron Age in the Caucasus area is divided conventionally into two periods, Early Iron I, dated to about 1100 BC, and the Early Iron II phase from the tenth to ninth centuries BC. Many of the material culture traditions of the Late Bronze Age continued into the Early Iron Age. Thus, there is a sociocultural continuity during this transitional period.

In Iran, the earliest actual iron artifacts were unknown until the 9th century BC. For Iran, the best studied archaeological site during this time period is Teppe Hasanlu.

West Asia
In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the initial use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps 3000 BC. One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known is a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500 BC. The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East (North Africa, southwest Asia) by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

The development of iron smelting was once attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, the Bronze Age collapse saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region. It was long believed that the success of the Hittite Empire during the Late Bronze Age had been based on the advantages entailed by the "monopoly" on ironworking at the time. Accordingly, the invading Sea Peoples would have been responsible for spreading the knowledge through that region. The idea of such a "Hittite monopoly" has been examined more thoroughly and no longer represents a scholarly consensus. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of the same time period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons.

Dates are approximate; consult particular article for details.
 * Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

Egypt
Iron metal is singularly scarce in collections of Egyptian antiquities. Bronze remained the primary material there until the conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 671 BC. The explanation of this would seem to be that the relics are in most cases the paraphernalia of tombs, the funeral vessels and vases, and iron being considered an impure metal by the ancient Egyptians it was never used in their manufacture of these or for any religious purposes. It was attributed to Seth, the spirit of evil who according to Egyptian tradition governed the central deserts of Africa. In the Black Pyramid of Abusir, dating before 2000 BC, Gaston Maspero found some pieces of iron. In the funeral text of Pepi I, the metal is mentioned. A sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit. A dagger with an iron blade found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BC, was examined recently and found to be of meteoric origin.

Europe

In Europe, the Iron Age is the last stage of prehistoric Europe and the first of the protohistoric periods, which initially means descriptions of a particular area by Greek and Roman writers. For much of Europe, the period came to an abrupt local end after conquest by the Romans, though ironworking remained the dominant technology until recent times. Elsewhere it may last until the early centuries AD, and either Christianization or a new conquest during the Migration Period.

Iron working was introduced to Europe during the late 11th century BC, probably from the Caucasus, and slowly spread northwards and westwards over the succeeding 500 years. The Iron Age did not start when iron first appeared in Europe but it began to replace bronze in the preparation of tools and weapons. It did not happen at the same time throughout Europe; local cultural developments played a role in the transition to the Iron Age. For example, the Iron Age of Prehistoric Ireland begins about 500 BC (when the Greek Iron Age had already ended) and finishes about 400 AD. The widespread use of the technology of iron was implemented in Europe simultaneously with Asia. The prehistoric Iron Age in Central Europe is divided into two periods based on the Hallstatt culture (early Iron Age) and La Tène (late Iron Age) cultures. Material cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène consist of 4 phases (A, B, C, D). The Iron Age in Europe is characterized by an elaboration of designs of weapons, implements, and utensils. These are no longer cast but hammered into shape, and decoration is elaborate and curvilinear rather than simple rectilinear; the forms and character of the ornamentation of the northern European weapons resemble in some respects Roman arms, while in other respects they are peculiar and evidently representative of northern art.

Citânia de Briteiros, located in Guimarães, Portugal, is one of the examples of archaeological sites of the Iron Age. This settlement (fortified villages) covered an area of 3.8 hectare, and served as a Celtiberian stronghold against Roman invasions. İt dates more than 2500 years back. The site was researched by Francisco Martins Sarmento starting from 1874. A number of amphoras (containers usually for wine or olive oil), coins, fragments of pottery, weapons, pieces of jewelry, as well as ruins of a bath and its pedra formosa (lit. 'handsome stone') revealed here.

Central Asia
The Iron Age in Central Asia began when iron objects appear among the Indo-European Saka in present-day Xinjiang (China) between the 10th century BC and the 7th century BC, such as those found at the cemetery site of Chawuhukou.

The Pazyryk culture is an Iron Age archaeological culture (c. 6th to 3rd centuries BC) identified by excavated artifacts and mummified humans found in the Siberian permafrost in the Altay Mountains.

East Asia
Dates are approximate; consult particular article for details. In China, Chinese bronze inscriptions are found around 1200 BC, preceding the development of iron metallurgy, which was known by the 9th century BC. The large seal script is identified with a group of characters from a book entitled Shǐ Zhòu Piān (c. 800 BC). Therefore, in China prehistory had given way to history periodized by ruling dynasties by the start of iron use, so "Iron Age" is not used typically to describe a period of Chinese history. Iron metallurgy reached the Yangtse Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC. The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. The mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Lingnan belongs to the mid-to-late Warring States period (from about 350 BC). Important non-precious husi style metal finds include iron tools found at the tomb at Guwei-cun of the 4th century BC.
 * Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

The techniques used in Lingnan are a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan. The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments, and the sophisticated cast.

An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has been associated tentatively with the Zhang Zhung culture described by early Tibetan writings.

In Japan, iron items, such as tools, weapons, and decorative objects, are postulated to have entered Japan during the late Yayoi period (c. 300 BC – 300 AD) or the succeeding Kofun period (c.  250–538 AD), most likely from the Korean Peninsula and China.

Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period; The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mounds dating from that era.

Iron objects were introduced to the Korean peninsula through trade with chiefdoms and state-level societies in the Yellow Sea area during the 4th century BC, just at the end of the Warring States Period but prior to the beginning of the Western Han dynasty. Yoon proposes that iron was first introduced to chiefdoms located along North Korean river valleys that flow into the Yellow Sea such as the Cheongcheon and Taedong Rivers. Iron production quickly followed during the 2nd century BC, and iron implements came to be used by farmers by the 1st century in southern Korea. The earliest known cast-iron axes in southern Korea are found in the Geum River basin. The time that iron production begins is the same time that complex chiefdoms of Proto-historic Korea emerged. The complex chiefdoms were the precursors of early states such as Silla, Baekje, Goguryeo, and Gaya Iron ingots were an important mortuary item and indicated the wealth or prestige of the deceased during this period.

South Asia
Dates are approximate; consult particular article for details.
 * Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

The earliest evidence of iron smelting predates the emergence of the Iron Age proper by several centuries. Iron was being used in Mundigak to manufacture some items in the 3rd millennium BC such as a small copper/bronze bell with an iron clapper, a copper/bronze rod with two iron decorative buttons, and a copper/bronze mirror handle with a decorative iron button. Artefacts including small knives and blades have been discovered in the Indian state of Telangana which have been dated between 2400 BC and 1800 BC. The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began prior to the 3rd millennium BC. Archaeological sites in India, such as Malhar, Dadupur, Raja Nala Ka Tila, Lahuradewa, Kosambi and Jhusi, Allahabad in present-day Uttar Pradesh show iron implements in the period 1800–1200 BC. As the evidence from the sites Raja Nala ka tila, Malhar suggest the use of Iron in c. 1800/1700 BC. The extensive use of iron smelting is from Malhar and its surrounding area. This site is assumed as the center for smelted bloomer iron to this area due to its location in the Karamnasa River and Ganga River. This site shows agricultural technology as iron implements sickles, nails, clamps, spearheads, etc., by at least c. 1500 BC. Archaeological excavations in Hyderabad show an Iron Age burial site.

The beginning of the 1st millennium BC saw extensive developments in iron metallurgy in India. Technological advancement and mastery of iron metallurgy were achieved during this period of peaceful settlements. One ironworking centre in East India has been dated to the first millennium BC. In Southern India (present-day Mysore) iron appeared as early as 12th to 11th centuries BC; these developments were too early for any significant close contact with the northwest of the country. The Indian Upanishads mention metallurgy. and the Indian Mauryan period saw advances in metallurgy. As early as 300 BC, certainly by 200 AD, high-quality steel was produced in southern India, by what would later be called the crucible technique. In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in a crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon.

The protohistoric Early Iron Age in Sri Lanka lasted from 1000 BC to 600 BC. Radiocarbon evidence has been collected from Anuradhapura and Aligala shelter in Sigiriya. The Anuradhapura settlement is recorded to extend 10 ha by 800 BC and grew to 50 ha by 700–600 BC to become a town. The skeletal remains of an Early Iron Age chief were excavated in Anaikoddai, Jaffna. The name "Ko Veta" is engraved in Brahmi script on a seal buried with the skeleton and is assigned by the excavators to the 3rd century BC. Ko, meaning "King" in Tamil, is comparable to such names as Ko Atan and Ko Putivira occurring in contemporary Brahmi inscriptions in south India. It is also speculated that Early Iron Age sites may exist in Kandarodai, Matota, Pilapitiya and Tissamaharama.

The earliest undisputed deciphered epigraphy found in the Indian subcontinent are the Edicts of Ashoka of the 3rd century BC, in the Brahmi script. Several inscriptions were thought to be pre-Ashokan by earlier scholars; these include the Piprahwa relic casket inscription, the Badli pillar inscription, the Bhattiprolu relic casket inscription, the Sohgaura copper plate inscription, the Mahasthangarh Brahmi inscription, the Eran coin legend, the Taxila coin legends, and the inscription on the silver coins of Sophytes. However, more recent scholars have dated them to later periods.

Southeast Asia
Dates are approximate; consult particular article for details. Archaeology in Thailand at sites Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao Sam Kaeo yielding metallic, stone, and glass artifacts stylistically associated with the Indian subcontinent suggest Indianization of Southeast Asia beginning in the 4th to 2nd centuries BC during the late Iron Age.
 * Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

In Philippines and Vietnam, the Sa Huynh culture showed evidence of an extensive trade network. Sa Huynh beads were made from glass, carnelian, agate, olivine, zircon, gold and garnet; most of these materials were not local to the region and were most likely imported. Han-dynasty-style bronze mirrors were also found in Sa Huynh sites. Conversely, Sa Huynh produced ear ornaments have been found in archaeological sites in Central Thailand, as well as the Orchid Island.

Africa
Early evidence for iron technology in Sub-Saharan Africa can be found at sites such as KM2 and KM3 in northwest Tanzania and parts of Nigeria and the Central African Republic. Nubia was one of the relatively few places in Africa to have a sustained Bronze Age along with Egypt and much of the rest of North Africa.

Archaeometallurgical scientific knowledge and technological development originated in numerous centers of Africa; the centers of origin were located in West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa; consequently, as these origin centers are located within inner Africa, these archaeometallurgical developments are thus native African technologies. Iron metallurgical development occurred 2631–2458 BC at Lejja, in Nigeria, 2136–1921 BC at Obui, in Central Africa Republic, 1895–1370 BC at Tchire Ouma 147, in Niger, and 1297–1051 BC at Dekpassanware, in Togo.

Very early copper and bronze working sites in Niger may date to as early as 1500 BC. There is also evidence of iron metallurgy in Termit, Niger from around this period. Nubia was a major manufacturer and exporter of iron after the expulsion of the Nubian dynasty from Egypt by the Assyrians in the 7th century BC.

Though there is some uncertainty, some archaeologists believe that iron metallurgy was developed independently in sub-Saharan West Africa, separately from Eurasia and neighboring parts of North and Northeast Africa.

Archaeological sites containing iron smelting furnaces and slag have also been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria in what is now Igboland: dating to 2000 BC at the site of Lejja (Eze-Uzomaka 2009) and to 750 BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009). The site of Gbabiri (in the Central African Republic) has yielded evidence of iron metallurgy, from a reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop; with earliest dates of 896–773 BC and 907–796 BC, respectively. Similarly, smelting in bloomery-type furnaces appear in the Nok culture of central Nigeria by about 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier.

Iron and copper working in Sub-Saharan Africa spread south and east from Central Africa in conjunction with the Bantu expansion, from the Cameroon region to the African Great Lakes in the 3rd century BC, reaching the Cape around 400 AD. However, iron working may have been practiced in central Africa as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Instances of carbon steel based on complex preheating principles were found to be in production around the 1st century CE in northwest Tanzania.

Dates are approximate; consult particular article for details
 * Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age Historic Iron Age

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Iron Age


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EFnet

EFnet or Eris-Free network is a major Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, with more than 35,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.

History
Initially, most IRC servers formed a single IRC network, to which new servers could join without restriction, but this was soon abused by people who set up servers to sabotage other users, channels, or servers. Restriction grew and, in August 1990,  was the last server indiscriminately allowing other servers to join it, Eris being the Greek goddess of strife and discord.

A group of operators, with the support of Jarkko Oikarinen, introduced a new "Q-line" into their server configurations, to "quarantine" themselves away from eris by disconnecting from any subset of the IRC network as soon as they saw eris there.

For a few days, the entire IRC network suffered frequent netsplits, but eventually the majority of servers added the Q-line and effectively created a new separate IRC net called EFnet (Eris-Free Network); the remaining servers which stayed connected to eris (and thus were no longer able to connect to EFnet servers) were called A-net (Anarchy Network). A-net soon vanished, leaving EFnet as the only IRC network.

Continuing problems with performance and abuse eventually led to the rise of another major IRC network, Undernet, which split off in October 1992.

In July 1996, disagreement on policy caused EFnet to break in two: the slightly larger European half (including Australia and Japan) formed IRCnet, while the American servers continued as EFnet. This was known as The Great Split.

In July 2001, after a string of DDoS attacks a service called CHANFIX (originally JUPES) was created, which is designed to give back ops to channels which have lost ops or been taken over.

In 2007, various EFnet servers began implementing SSL.

February 2009 saw the introduction of a new CHANFIX module called OPME, a mechanism for EFnet Admins to use to restore ops in an opless channel. It was proposed by Douglas Boldt to provide a much cleaner alternative to masskill, which was unnecessarily invasive and disruptive to the network.

Later in 2009, some major IRC servers were delinked:,  ,  , EFnet's only UK server  , and EFnet's only UK hub  , which were sponsored by Demon Internet.

In September 2010, the two western regions of the network (United States and Canada) merged into the North American region. While the North American and European regions are technically independent of each other, today many issues within EFnet are handled at a global level.

On April 1, 2018, as an April Fools' joke, the 1990s IRC server eris.Berkeley.EDU server was resurrected. Some EFnet admins worked with the Open Computing Facility student group at UC Berkeley for months to resurrect the server for April Fools. Only a few EFnet staff were aware of the efforts and the server was linked in via a defunct H:line for the (normally) leaf (client-only) server, bypassing the normal linking procedure. As of 12:30 UTC on April 01 2018, eris.Berkeley.EDU was once again a valid IRC server on the "Eris Free" IRC network and accepted clients. At the same time, efnet.org begin redirecting to erisnet.org. eris.Berkeley.EDU delinked on April 02 2018 at 19:50 UTC.

Characteristics

EFnet has large variations in rules and policy between different servers as well as the two major regions (EU and NA). Both have their own policy structure, and each region votes on its own server applications. However, central policies are voted upon by the server admin community which is archived for referencing.

Due to EFnet's nature, it has gained recognition over the years for warez, hackers, and DoS attacks.

EFnet has always been known for its lack of IRC services that other IRC networks support (such as NickServ and ChanServ, although it had a NickServ until April 8, 1994 ). Instead, the CHANFIX service was introduced to fix "opless" channels.

All servers on EFnet run ircd-ratbox.

EFnet's channel operators are generally free to run their channels however they see fit without the intervention of IRC operators. IRC ops are primarily there to handle network and server related issues, and rarely get involved with channel-level issues.

title: EFnet


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Undernet

The Undernet is the third largest publicly monitored Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, c. 2022, with about 36 client servers serving 47,444 users in ~6000 channels at any given time.

IRC clients can connect to Undernet via the global round robin irc.undernet.org, the region-specific round robins us.undernet.org and eu.undernet.org, IPv6 client servers irc6.undernet.org or a specific server from the server list.

History
Undernet was established in October 1992 by Danny Mitchell, Donald Lambert, and Laurent Demally as an experimental network running a modified version of the EFnet irc2.7 IRCd software, created in an attempt to make it less bandwidth-consumptive and less chaotic, as netsplits and takeovers were starting to plague EFnet. The Undernet IRC daemon became known as "ircu". Undernet was formed at a time when many small IRC networks were being started and subsequently disappearing; however, it managed to grow into one of the largest and oldest IRC networks despite some initial in-fighting and setbacks. For a period in 1994, Undernet was wracked by an ongoing series of flame wars. Again in 2001, it was threatened by automated heavy spamming of its users for potential commercial gain. Undernet survived these periods relatively intact and its popularity continues to the present day.

It is notable as being the first network to utilize timestamping, originally made by Carlo Wood, in the IRC server protocol as a means to curb abuse.

Services
Undernet uses GNUworld to provide X, its channel service bot. X operates on a username basis; a username is independent from a nickname, which cannot be registered on Undernet.

As Undernet limits channel registration to "established channels" or channels with an active userbase, Undernet introduced a version of ChanFix (under the nickname C) designed to work like EFNet's CHANFIX. Its use is to protect unregistered channels. ChanFix tracks channel op usage by username basis and restores ops if channels become opless or are taken over.

title: Undernet


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DALnet

DALnet is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network made up of 39 servers, with a stable population of approximately 10,000 users in about 4,000 channels.

DALnet is accessible by connecting with an IRC client to an active DALnet server on ports 6660 through 6669, and 7000. SSL users can connect on port 6697 as well. The generic round-robin address is irc.dal.net.

History
DALnet was founded in July 1994 by members of the EFnet #startrek channel. This new network was known as "dal's net", after the nickname used by the administrator of the first IRC server on the network, "dalvenjah", taken from the dragon "Dalvenjah Foxfire", in a fantasy novel by Thorarinn Gunnarsson. The network was soon renamed from dal's net to DALnet.

In contrast to other IRC networks of the time, in 1995 DALnet implemented "services", a system that enforced IRC nickname and channel registrations. Traditionally, on IRC, anybody can own a channel or a nickname; if no one is using it, it can be used by anyone who chooses to do so. On DALnet, however, this was no longer the case. This service—which many users saw as a way of firmly establishing their online identities—was a significant factor in DALnet's popularity and afforded the network a distinctive reputation among IRCers. While attempts to implement a similar system had been made before and other networks have since developed registration services of their own, at the time DALnet's successful decision to allow and enforce nickname and channel registration was considered to be unique and even controversial, as it went against established practice.

From 25 users in July 1994, the number of users grew to 1,000 by November 1995, 5,000 by June 1996, 10,000 by December 1996, 50,000 by October 1999, 100,000 in November 2001, and peaked around 142,000 in April 2002, by which time the network had 44 servers. At that point DALnet was one of the four biggest IRC networks.

The network was severely disrupted in late 2002 and early 2003 by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Added to the DDoS issues was that the owner of twisted.dal.net (the world's largest single IRC server, hosting more than 50,000 clients most of the time) delinked his servers (for personal reasons). The other servers on the network could not absorb the extra client load, leading to users' complete inability to connect to DALnet. The network was first crushed by attacks, and then by its own user base.

It was around this time that DALnet closed many of its channels that were dedicated to serving content such as MP3 files and movies. File transfers were still allowed but not on a large scale. This raised suspicion as to whether DALnet was being targeted by the RIAA, although this was not true, but a precautionary measure.

In 2003, DALnet put up its first anycast servers under the name "The IX Concept", and made irc.dal.net resolve to the anycast IP. Since then, most new client servers linked are anycast.

Characteristics
The main characteristics of DALnet is its ChanServ services which was invented on DALnet in 1995. Along with NickServ it gave a solid ground for usability and security on IRC where users got the ability to register their nicknames and their channels.

DALnet is also developing and running on its own ircd software called Bahamut which is based on ircd-hybrid and Dreamforge and was first live in the early 2000s. The name Bahamut comes from a silver-white dragon with blue eyes standing for protection, wisdom, justice and hope in Dungeons & Dragons.

title: DALnet


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BitchX

BitchX is a free IRC client that has been regarded as the most popular ircII-based IRC client. The initial implementation, written by "Trench" and "HappyCrappy", was a script for the IrcII chat client. It was converted to a program in its own right by panasync (Colten Edwards). BitchX 1.1 final was released in 2004. It is written in C and is a TUI application utilizing ncurses. GTK+ toolkit support has been dropped. It works on all Unix-like operating systems, and is distributed under a BSD license. It was originally based on ircII-EPIC, and eventually it was merged into the EPIC IRC client. It supports IPv6, multiple servers and SSL, and a subset of UTF-8 (characters contained in ISO-8859-1) with an unofficial patch.

On several occasions, BitchX has been noted to be a popular IRC client for Unix-like systems.

The latest official release is version 1.2.

BitchX does not yet support Unicode.

Security
It was known that early versions of BitchX were vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack in that they could be caused to crash by passing specially-crafted strings as arguments to certain IRC commands. This was before format string attacks became a well-known class of vulnerability.

The previous version of BitchX, released in 2004, has security problems allowing remote IRC servers to execute arbitrary code on the client's machine (CVE-2007-3360, CVE-2007-4584).

On April 26, 2009, Slackware removed BitchX from its distribution, citing the numerous unresolved security issues.

The aforementioned vulnerabilities were fixed in the sources for the 1.2 release.

title: BitchX


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MIRC

mIRC (إم آي آر سي) is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Windows. It is a fully functional chat utility and its integrated scripting language makes it extensible and versatile. The software was first released in 1995 and has since been described as "one of the most popular IRC clients available for Windows." mIRC is shareware and requires payment for registration after the 30-day evaluation period.

History
mIRC was created by Khaled Mardam-Bey, a British programmer born in Jordan to a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. He began developing the software in late 1994, and released its first version on 28 February 1995.

Mardam-Bey states that he decided to create mIRC because he felt the first IRC clients for Windows lacked some basic IRC features. He then continued developing it due to the challenge and the fact that people appreciated his work. The author states that its subsequent popularity allowed him to make a living out of mIRC. He also jokingly states that the "m" in mIRC stands for "moo" or "MU" (meaning 'nothing' in Japanese and Korean).

mIRC 5.91 is the final version to support 16-bit Windows; 6.35 is the last to support Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, and ME. The current version supports Windows XP and later.

The application makes an appearance in the 2006 music video for "Boten Anna" by Basshunter.

Main features
mIRC has a number of distinguishing features. One is its scripting language which is further developed with each version. The scripting language can be used to make minor changes to the program like custom commands (aliases), but can also used to completely alter the behavior and appearance of mIRC. Another claimed feature is mIRC's file sharing abilities, via the DCC protocol, featuring a built-in file server.

Starting with mIRC 7.1, released on 30 July 2010, Unicode and IPv6 are supported.

mIRC scripting
mIRC's abilities and behaviors can be altered and extended using the embedded mIRC scripting language. mIRC includes its own GUI scripting editor, with help that has been described as "extremely detailed".

Due to the level of access the language has to a user's computer — for example, being able to rename and delete files — a number of abusive scripts have been made. One example of abuse was that executed with the $decode identifier which decodes a given encoded string. The issue was reported in August 2001; even five months later, users were still being reported as having fallen prey, tricked into executing commands on their systems which result in "handing control of [their] mIRC over to somebody else". This led to changes being made in mIRC version 6.17: according to the author, $decode is now disabled by default, and various other features which can be considered dangerous are now lockable.

Reception
mIRC has been downloaded over 40 million times from CNET's Download.com service. In 2003, Nielsen/NetRatings ranked mIRC among the top ten most popular Internet applications.

title: MIRC


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HexChat

HexChat is a discontinued Internet Relay Chat client and is a fork of XChat. It has a choice of a tabbed document interface or tree interface, support for multiple servers, and numerous configuration options. Both command-line and graphical versions are available.

The client runs on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, and many Linux distributions include packages in their repositories.

History
The XChat-WDK (XChat Windows Driver Kit) project started in 2010 and was originally Windows-only. The project's original goal was to merge itself with XChat, but evolved from just fixing Windows bugs to adding new features. It started to make sense to support more platforms than Windows. On July 6, 2012, XChat-WDK officially changed its name to HexChat.

The project was discontinued in early 2024, citing lack of maintainer availability.

title: HexChat


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IRC takeover

An IRC channel takeover is an acquisition of IRC channel operator status by someone other than the channel's owner. It has largely been eliminated due to the increased use of services on IRC networks.

Riding the split
The most common variety of channel takeover uses disconnections caused by a netsplit; this is called riding the split. After such mass disconnections, a channel may be left without users, allowing the first rejoining user to recreate the channel and gain operator status. When the servers merge, any pre-existing operators retain their status, allowing the new user to kick out the original operators and take over the channel.

A simple prevention mechanism involves timestamping (abbreviated to TS), or checking the creation dates of the channels being merged. This was first implemented by Undernet (ircu) in November 2000 and is now common in many IRC servers. If both channels were created at the same time, all user statuses are retained when the two are combined; if one is newer than the other, special statuses are removed from those in the newer channel.

Additionally, a newer protection involving timestamping is used when a server splits away from the main network (when it no longer detects that IRC services are available), it disallows anyone creating a channel to be given operator privileges.

Nick collision
Another popular form of channel takeover abuses nickname collision protection, which keeps two users from having the same nickname at once. A user on one side of a netsplit takes the nickname of a target on the other side of the split; when the servers reconnect, the nicks collide and both users are kicked from the server. The attacker then reconnects or switches nicks in a second client while the target reconnects, and proceeds to jupe (or block) the target's nickname for a period of time.

User timestamping is often used to detect these kinds of attacks in a fashion similar to channel timestamping, with the user who selected that nickname later being kicked from the server. Another protection method, called nickhold, disallows the use of recently split nicknames. This causes fewer kicks, but causes more inconvenience to users. For this reason, timestamping is generally more common. Some servers, such as ircd-ratbox, do both. IRC services and bots can also protect against such attacks by requiring that a password be supplied to use a certain nick. Users who do not provide a password are killed after a certain amount of time.

Other methods
Other methods can be used to take over a channel, though they are unrelated to flaws in IRC itself; for example, cracking the computers of channel operators, compromising channel bot shell accounts, or obtaining services passwords through social engineering.

Smurfing
Smurf attacks have been used to take over IRC servers. These exploit ICMP ping responses from broadcast addresses at multiple hosts sharing an Internet address, and forge the ping packet's return address to match a target machine's address. A single malformed packet sent to the "smurf amplifier" will be echoed to the target machine.

title: IRC takeover


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Irssi

Irssi ( (listen)) is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client program for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Microsoft Windows. It was originally written by Timo Sirainen, and released under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later in January 1999.

The program has a text-based user interface was written from scratch using C. It may be customized by editing its config files or by installing plugins and Perl scripts. Though initially developed for Unix-like operating systems, it has been successfully ported to both Windows and macOS.

Features
Irssi is written in the C programming language and in normal operation uses a text-mode user interface.

According to the developers, Irssi was written from scratch, not based on ircII (like BitchX and epic). This freed the developers from having to deal with the constraints of an existing codebase, allowing them to maintain tighter control over issues such as security and customization. Numerous Perl scripts have been made available for Irssi to customise how it looks and operates. Plugins are available which add encryption and protocols such as ICQ and XMPP.

Irssi may be configured by using its user interface or by manually editing its configuration files, which use a syntax resembling Perl data structures.

Distributions
Irssi was written primarily to run on Unix-like operating systems, and binaries and packages are available for Gentoo Linux, Debian, Slackware, SUSE (openSUSE), Frugalware, Fedora, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, Arch Linux, Ubuntu, NixOS, and others.

Irssi builds and runs on Microsoft Windows under Cygwin, and in 2006, an official Windows standalone build was released.

For the Unix-based macOS, text mode ports are available from the Homebrew, MacPorts, and Fink package managers, and two graphical clients have been written based on Irssi, IrssiX, and MacIrssi. The Cocoa client Colloquy was previously based on Irssi, but it now uses its own IRC core implementation.

title: Irssi