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" In Ice-T&amp;#039;s 2012 tell-all, Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption, he went on record about the world&amp;#039;s second oldest profession. &amp;quot;Pimpin&amp;#039; ain&amp;#039;t easy,&amp;quot; he wrote. &amp;quot;No, as a matter of fact, it&amp;#039;s very fucking complicated. It&amp;#039;s the type of game where you&amp;#039;ll end up pulling your hair out before you learn to do it correctly.&amp;quot; This thesis is proven conclusively in the new Ice-T-produced documentary, Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, available on iTunes now and in theaters now. Iceberg Slim, for the uninitiated, is the world&amp;#039;s most famous former pimp, a guy who wrote one of the most influential &amp;quot;non-fiction&amp;quot; books about the game, the 1967 paperback Pimp: The Story of My Life \u2014 a copy of which ended up in the back pocket of a New Jersey kid named Tracy Marrow who&amp;#039;d grow up to write rap songs about cop killers and, well, pimps. I called Ice-T to talk about his new movie and the minutiae of pimping. We ended up talking about the Pope. Because duh. ERIC SPITZNAGEL: How&amp;#039;d you first find out about Iceberg Slim? ICE-T: I was in high school, and the cool kids would carry Iceberg&amp;#039;s books around. ES: The Pimp book? IT: All of them. Mama Black Widow, Long White Con, Trick Baby. They&amp;#039;d carry them in their back pockets, and I wanted to know what was in these books. I got a hold of them and started reading. And they&amp;#039;re just crazy. ES: That&amp;#039;s putting it mildly.  IT: Just the lingo, the depth of the streets, the way Slim talked. It was totally fascinating. And before you know it, I was a 16-year-old kid talking to girls like a 50-year-old man. ES: Like a 50-year-old pimp, no less.  IT: Exactly, yeah. [Laughs.] Let&amp;#039;s just say I became really, really popular because of his books. ES: Were the girls impressed or confused? IT: They were like, &amp;quot;Who the hell are you?&amp;quot; When you&amp;#039;re young, you&amp;#039;re looking for anything remotely hip to grasp onto and call your own. To be able to pull hipness from some left-field book that none of the girls knew about, it was the coolest thing in the world. ES: I&amp;#039;ve heard you can quote lines from the book from memory.  IT: Oh, I can quote lots of it. ES: Give me something crazy. IT: Okay, here goes one. [Clears throat.] &amp;quot;I need a three-way wench that&amp;#039;ll play Jasper in a stench and take &amp;#039;em around the horn. No Jean or John this ho couldn&amp;#039;t con cause that trick was never born.&amp;quot; ES: Good lord. IT: &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;ll stuff like an ace, never lose a case, and leave many a mark in debt. She&amp;#039;ll be rated the best in the east and the west when the boosting hand goes down.&amp;quot; ES: You&amp;#039;re unstoppable! IT: &amp;quot;Now I heard hos cry about the wind behind and the law being on their tail. About snow and sleet bein&amp;#039; asshole deep and the tricks can go to hell.&amp;quot; ES: This is all in your brain? IT: &amp;quot;In some greasy spoon, a juke saloon, you&amp;#039;ll find them killing their time. Crying hard luck tears and suckin&amp;#039; up beers and the pimps ain&amp;#039;t giving a dime.&amp;quot; ES: The whole interview should be just you doing this. IT: &amp;quot;Turning half-dollar tricks just to get a fix, because their pussy is doing the pimpin&amp;#039;. They&amp;#039;re just ruining the name of one helluva game, because their pimps are doing the simp.&amp;quot; ES: Okay, okay, stop, I can&amp;#039;t take it.  IT: I can do more. ES: I believe you! If I heard a 15-year-old boy say any of this, it would blow my mind. IT: Thank you. This is the kind of stuff I was saying to girls. And I&amp;#039;m not telling them that it comes from a book. I&amp;#039;m just talking it. ES: You eventually named yourself after Iceberg, right? IT: Yeah. My name, my real name, is Tracy. I always thought I was like a boy named Sue. So I made my friends call me &amp;quot;Tray.&amp;quot; And when I started saying Iceberg lines, then the guys started saying, &amp;quot;Tell us some more of that Ice stuff, T.&amp;quot; See what I mean? ES: Oh wow. IT: That&amp;#039;s where Ice-T came from. ES: It&amp;#039;s like a superhero origin story. IT: Yeah, something like that. [Laughs.] ES: Iceberg Slim got his name because someone shot at him and the bullet went through his hat and he didn&amp;#039;t react. Could you be that cool? IT: Yeah. I&amp;#039;m pretty cool. I&amp;#039;ve got a decent cool level going. Yeah. ES: What&amp;#039;s the secret? IT: Being cool is when you win, you don&amp;#039;t get too happy, and when you lose, you don&amp;#039;t get too mad. ES: No, I mean what&amp;#039;s the secret to being cool when somebody fires a gun at you? IT: Not knowing the bullet went through your hat. [Laughs.] ES: Your knowledge of Iceberg Slim apparently led to your becoming an apprentice for a pimp in Hawaii. Is that true? IT: I was in Hawaii and the sister of my buddy&amp;#039;s girlfriend was a prostitute. She had a pimp out there that we hung out with. He had parties and stuff. He&amp;#039;s the first one who told me I could make it in the game. ES: The pimping game? IT: Yeah. He told me, &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t seem fascinated with these women. Some guys are really giddy around chicks, but you just mind your business.&amp;quot; I wasn&amp;#039;t trippin&amp;#039;. So later in life I came back and hung out with him for a while and we&amp;#039;d drive chicks around and do all kinds of stuff. ES: The pimping trade seems like a Jedi Knight thing. IT: A what? ES: Jedis. You know, like from Star Wars. IT: Oh, oh yeah. I mean... I guess, sure. ES: You find your master, your Ben Kenobi, and then he teaches everything you need to know. IT: They say trying to teach pimpin&amp;#039; is like trying to teach astrophysics to a wino. ES: So... What are you telling me? It can&amp;#039;t be taught?  IT: Certain people are just born into it. You&amp;#039;ve got to be more into money than chicks. Your brain has to operate differently. You&amp;#039;ve got to be like Hugh Hefner. You&amp;#039;ve got to look at her and say, &amp;quot;She could make me a lot of money.&amp;quot; You have to redirect.  ES: Can that skill be learned? Or is it just in your DNA? IT: You can learn it, but it ain&amp;#039;t easy. The closest way I can explain it is like, when a man sees a woman and you love her and you want her, you say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll give her anything. She can have all my money. I want her so bad.&amp;quot; You go into that zone. ES: Been there. IT: The pimp&amp;#039;s job is to be so clean, so sharp, so fly that when that woman sees him she goes, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll do anything to be with that man.&amp;quot; ES: The pimp has to be more attractive? IT: That&amp;#039;s why you have to out-groom the woman. You have to be fly-er than her. ES: I like the way Iceberg explained the pimp costume in the movie. &amp;quot;They lived in my reflective glory.&amp;quot; IT: Yeah. It&amp;#039;s like a girl who dates the quarterback. She&amp;#039;s nobody, but his glory becomes her glory. When he wins, she shines. &amp;quot;Oh, my man just won!&amp;quot; He gets a car and she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Look at the car my man got.&amp;quot; Or even the guys with the trophy wives, where they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;Look at my wife. My wife is so hot. I&amp;#039;m a bum but... look at my reflected glory.&amp;quot; ES: How much does a pimp actually make? Fifteen percent of his ho&amp;#039;s salary? Twenty percent? Like a talent agent? IT: Well, in real life, they take it all.  ES: Everything? IT: Everything. The whole paycheck. ES: That is horseshit. IT: Depends how you look at it. ES: If my agent wanted 100 percent, I would fire his ass. IT: It&amp;#039;s kind of like a wife. A wife tells you, &amp;quot;Bring me all the money after you work, and then we&amp;#039;ll determine what we do with it. Don&amp;#039;t stuff, don&amp;#039;t try to take half your check and put it someplace else. Bring it all back, and then we&amp;#039;ll make a decision on how we split it.&amp;quot; ES: Were you actually a pimp at one point, or was that just a pose?  IT: I like to say I attempted. ES: Attempted how? IT: You are not a professional at something unless you pay your rent doing it. I never made enough to pay my rent. ES: Did you at least dress the part of a pimp? IT: Not like the flamboyant pimps, like Don &amp;quot;Magic&amp;quot; Juan. Not like you see on Halloween. I used to get my hair done. I had a perm, and my nails manicured. ES: There are a lot of bad things about being a pimp. IT: Oh, yeah. I always tell people there is nothing positive about the pimp lifestyle. I mean, it&amp;#039;s a crime. It&amp;#039;s just like selling drugs or stealing cars. It&amp;#039;s a negative hustle. ES: Iceberg Slim could be violent, especially toward women. As somebody says in the movie, &amp;quot;His foot had no problem finding its way into a woman&amp;#039;s ass.&amp;quot; IT: Yeah, but it&amp;#039;s a story about redemption. At the beginning of this movie, the way we did it, you hate Iceberg. He&amp;#039;s brutalizing women, he&amp;#039;s not a person that you want your kid to become. But then there&amp;#039;s a point where he changes. And he ends up humbling himself. He&amp;#039;s married, and he&amp;#039;s out trying to be an exterminator, trying to take care of his kids.  ES: But the movie still glamorizes something that&amp;#039;s pretty horrible. Even if you think prostitution is okay, and women should be able to sell their bodies if they want, it&amp;#039;s hard to justify pimps. IT: I totally agree, yeah, yeah. That&amp;#039;s what this story is about \u2014 it&amp;#039;s about a guy who thought this was a cool thing, a method to get paid. But then he has that revelation. Pimpin&amp;#039; is for young guys and suckers who don&amp;#039;t know. He comes out and tries to live a square life. ES: So much has changed in our cultural morals. There have been big victories recently for gay marriage and marijuana. Do you think prostitution will ever get there?  IT: Will it ever become legal? ES: Outside of Nevada anyway. IT: I don&amp;#039;t think they&amp;#039;re going to legally allow prostitution. Because it&amp;#039;s a business that any woman can open and close any time, any hour, any corner, any market. Every woman is sitting on $20,000. It&amp;#039;s not something that needs legalization. Every woman is a prostitute. ES: Um, okay. You may need to explain what you mean by that. IT: Any time a woman goes out to dinner with a guy she doesn&amp;#039;t like, she&amp;#039;s doing a form of prostitution. Everyone knows a whore. You have a girlfriend who thinks she&amp;#039;s sexy and being like those chicks on Sex and the City, and she&amp;#039;s got something and this guy is going to pay for it. That&amp;#039;s whorin&amp;#039;. ES: I&amp;#039;m not sure if that argument&amp;#039;s going to convince anyone.  IT: If you don&amp;#039;t like him, it&amp;#039;s whorin&amp;#039;. If you don&amp;#039;t like him but you&amp;#039;re going to use your sexual powers to get what you want with somebody you don&amp;#039;t like, it&amp;#039;s whorin&amp;#039;. You call it what you want. Even if she doesn&amp;#039;t have sex. Any time you give in for money, it&amp;#039;s a form of prostitution. Working at a job you hate is a form of prostitution.  ES: Guys can be whores, too?  IT: Absolutely. You feel like you&amp;#039;re giving yourself away for the money, you are a prostitute. I&amp;#039;ve got a friend \u2014 I&amp;#039;ll leave his name out of it \u2014 but he hangs around with older chicks and they give him money. I ask him what he&amp;#039;s doing, and he&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just pimping, baby.&amp;quot; ES: Yeeeah. No he&amp;#039;s not. IT: That ain&amp;#039;t pimping. That&amp;#039;s whoring. He&amp;#039;s having sex with these older chicks and they&amp;#039;re giving him money. You can&amp;#039;t yell, &amp;quot;pimp.&amp;quot; ES: You&amp;#039;ve called him out on this? IT: Oh, yeah. But he still denies it. He says, &amp;quot;Ice, I just call it renting out the beef cake.&amp;quot; ES: How is this an argument against the legalization of prostitution? IT: I know there&amp;#039;s a horrible side to it. You have trafficking of humans, you have slavery, you&amp;#039;ve got kids being abducted. Even real players don&amp;#039;t like that part of the game. Guys who do that aren&amp;#039;t pimps. They&amp;#039;re kidnappers. In the player game, the pimp game, they say this is a game by choice, it&amp;#039;s not by force. It&amp;#039;s not that. ES: Prostitutes will probably be around forever. IT: Never gonna stop. ES: But pimping seems like it might be a dying vocation. IT: Oh, absolutely. You&amp;#039;ve hit it dead on the head. ES: The Internet alone is a big nail in that coffin. IT: It&amp;#039;s the nail. Because of the Internet, women don&amp;#039;t need nobody. Yeah, it&amp;#039;s a sad thing, but pimps are becoming ancient history. Like preachers. I always compare pimps to preachers. ES: In what way? IT: They wear alligator shoes, flashy suits, diamond rings, drive Cadillacs. And they sell you something you don&amp;#039;t need. The preacher says, &amp;quot;I know God a little bit better than you. If you pay me, I&amp;#039;ll hook you up.&amp;quot; ES: Holy shit. IT: Am I wrong? ES: You&amp;#039;re not wrong at all. I&amp;#039;ve just never made that connection before. IT: The Pope is a pimp. He&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;I know Him a little bit better. I have a better connection. Pay me and I&amp;#039;ll get you hooked in better.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s pimpin&amp;#039;! ES: Sweet gentle Jesus. The Pope is a pimp. IT: He wears that hat. ES: He&amp;#039;s got the clothes. Nothing about a Pope costume is subtle. IT: He lives in a big house. He carries a lot of jewelry. Right? The Pope has the most jewels of anybody in Italy, right? He&amp;#039;s got the big crib, rides around in a Pope Mobile. And his job title starts with a &amp;quot;P.&amp;quot; ES: Stop it, Ice. You&amp;#039;re going to bring down the Catholic Church. IT: But here&amp;#039;s the thing people don&amp;#039;t always realize: If you want God, you don&amp;#039;t need connections. You don&amp;#039;t need a pimp. If you believe and you are spiritually connected, why you got to pay the middle man? ES: Who needs a pimp? IT: Who needs a pimp? We give all this money to the church. Does that get you to heaven quicker? ES: Probably not. IT: And yet we believe it. That&amp;#039;s pimpin&amp;#039;, man. Trust me. The Pope is a pimp. Read More Esquire.com Q&amp;amp;amp;As with Eric Spitznagel &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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