RHYME PAYS FOR ICE T

“I ain’t no beverage,” snapped Ice T, the hot L.A. rapper. “Tea is tame, I’m not.”

It came across loud and clear that his name has nothing to do with that hot-weather drink. But the beverage he was drinking in a West Hollywood restaurant the other afternoon did look suspiciously like you-know-what. “This isn’t iced tea,” insisted Ice T, who had driven over from Hollywood at cocktail hour to talk about his first album, “Rhyme Pays.”

Maybe he was drinking a Long Island iced tea, that killer cocktail that’s a blend of several kinds of hard liquor. “It ain’t booze either,” he said stonily. “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. I don’t do stupid things.”

He picked up the nearly empty glass and took a sip. “It’s just Coke,” he finally revealed.

Ice T drinking a harmless beverage? It didn’t fit. Like all rappers, he’s a macho man--full of sassiness and swagger.

“There’s a lot of stuff about me that people get wrong,” said Ice T, who admitted he thrives on his playboy-hustler image--which includes driving a flashy Porsche. “You can’t prejudge me. With me, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get.”

Ice T has his warm, friendly side but he mostly came across as serious, intense and, when talking about things he doesn’t like, quite abrasive. “I’m just like my songs--simple and tough,” he said proudly.

He might have also thrown in controversial.

Many will find his album offensive. A line in the tune “409” may rub gays the wrong way. And many women won’t like the passage in “6 ‘n the Mornin’ ” about guys beating up a woman. There’s hard-core sex in it too, particularly on “Sex” and “I Love Ladies.”

His raps are searing, profane, harsh, angry, bitter and, occasionally, brilliant. “Rhyme Pays” (on Sire Records) is easily one of the year’s finest rap albums.

The album bears a sticker warning of explicit lyrics. To Ice T, that’s something to boast about: “That tells the kids that’s something in there they shouldn’t hear. Naturally they can’t wait to hear it. That sticker helps sell records.”

The sticker is a sly dig at the Parents Music Resource Center, the Virginia-based organization pressuring the record industry to clean up its act. This label, supposedly warning people of offensive material, is in a cylindrical shape that could either be a bullet or a condom. “It can be taken either way,” Ice T explained. “It all depends on whether your mind is turned to sex or violence.”

Throughout his career, Ice T has been dogged by charges that he advocates violence. “I’m not a violent man,” he insisted, though lyrics on songs like “Squeeze the Trigger” are riddled with violent images. “Sure I deal with violence in my songs. Violence is part of the streets and rap is the music of the streets, the poetry of the streets. But that doesn’t make me a violent man and that doesn’t mean that I favor violence.”

One of Ice T’s early 12-inch singles, “Dog in the Wax,” got him into hot water. Even he now admits it was excessively violent: “I wanted to make a rap record to end all rap records. It was extreme. There’s some real hard-core murder stuff on it. That record is a monument to me talking crazy. I don’t do that anymore. Even though I was talking that way on that record I still say I’m not a violent man.”

But something else about Ice T causes people to doubt this claim: It’s that little gun he wears dangling from a heavy chain around his neck.

“This is a peace symbol,” he explained. “The government takes our tax money and buys guns so they can keep peace. So this can be looked at as a peace symbol.

A woman at the restaurant, fascinated by the gun, walked over to Ice T, gingerly touched the gun and asked him if it could really shoot. “No it doesn’t,” he replied.

“I have a little gun like that,” she said. “Mine shoots.”

By the way, don’t call him Mr. T. Most people just call him Ice. He earned that nickname as a youngster by frequently reciting the racy, rhythmic prose of a writer named Iceberg Slim. Ice is short for Iceberg.

His fascination with rapping--which he also calls power poetry and the real black music--began when he was a kid. “I always liked to rhyme,” said Ice T, a Newark, N.J., native who’s been living in Los Angeles since early adolescence. “It sounded good to me. It felt good to me. The rhythms--the feel of street rhyme--just penetrated my soul. I started rapping when I was young. It was a way of getting attention.”

Ice T is probably the West Coast’s ace rapper. For years, though, it was a hollow title. West Coast rappers were always regarded as second-rate. Since rap’s roots are in the mean streets of New York, East Coast artists have always been considered the premier rappers.

“They always said we couldn’t rap out here,” Ice T noted in a disgusted tone. “They said the rappers were soft and dainty out here. They said rap couldn’t make it on the West Coast. They were right about one thing. Rap had a hard time on the West Coast for a long time. It was underground--way underground. It took a while for it to get to the surface.”

It took a while for Ice T to surface too. An amateur rapper while a student at L.A.’s Crenshaw High and an airborne Ranger in the Army, he pursued rap seriously in the early ‘80s. His first record was a 1982 12-inch single, the sizzling “Coldest Rap.” But working in the film “Breakin’ ” was the first big break of his rapping career. Since then he’s done other movies--”Breakin’ II,” “Rappin’ ” and “Breakin’ and Entering”--and some commercials.

Though having a single, “Reckless,” on the “Breakin’ ” sound track was great exposure, like most rappers he was still limited to making 12-inch singles. But working with the great rapper Melle Mel gave him credibility. When Run-D.M.C.’s “Raising Hell” album sold millions last year and inspired record companies to sign rappers, Ice T got a deal with Sire Records.

“I’m showing everybody that we don’t pussyfoot around here in L.A. when it comes to rapping,” boasted Ice T, who’s still sensitive about the bum rap given to West Coast rap. “Rapping is in your heart and soul. A good rapper can come from anywhere .”

Ice T revealed his real name and age only after it was agreed that this was off-the-record information. “I don’t want kids to know who I am or how old I am,” he explained. “It’s OK to have some mystery around you.”

Though he’s hardly old, Ice T, who has a 10-year-old daughter, is no teen-ager either. But, he insisted, he’s a kid at heart and plans to stay that way.

“I refuse to grow up. I want to be like Bill Cosby. He’s like the father who never grew up. I admire that. When I finally grow up, I’ll be dying. You can understand why I’m not anxious for that to happen.”