Ice-T has spent so much time as an actor — playing a cop no less — that one might forget that he was a formative force in shaping L.A.’s gangsta rap movement. Preceding N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton by nearly a year, Ice-T’s debut LP, Rhyme Pays, featured one early gangsta classic, “6 ‘N the Morning,” T’s street-wise story song inspired by Philly’s Schooly D and his own pioneering hit, “P.S.K.” Elsewhere on Rhyme Pays, T, alongside longtime production partner Afrika Islam, roll out a series of drum machine-powered tracks whose titles more or less explain themselves: “Pain,” “Sex,” “Squeeze the Trigger,” et. al. though like all good gangsta rappers, he also took time to party with “Make It Funky” and “I Love Ladies.”