Ice-T has been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of rap music, and his quotes from Essnce Fest have been reported in the people.

He begins with s age summary. “When we started, hip-hop was supposed to be a fad…It’s great. Hip-hop has grey hairs. The beauty of it is that it’s still here, still flourishing and people still love it. It’s gone through a lot of different growing pains and stuff, but for them to say it was a fad — now you have hip-hop billionaires! Hip-hop is a culture. A youth culture, started by kids.”

But he also had a warning for the new generation: “I think people from my generation are really upset with what’s going on with the youngsters because every week somebody’s going to jail. People are dying of drugs, killing each other… My generation, we lost Tupac, we lost Biggie and we got the memo. Everybody calmed down. We all figured this out: We [were] rapping to get out of the streets.”

“But the youngsters who are out here behaving like that, these kids are millionaires so I don’t know how many young people gotta get lost, I don’t know which one might trigger that message, but I think it’s time for this generation to get a hold of itself.”