Ice-T

Street-level storytelling had been around before him, but not like this. '6 'N the Mornin'' dropped in 1986; Straight Outta Compton came two years later. His 1987 debut Rhyme Pays was the first hip-hop album to carry a parental advisory sticker and moved 500,000 copies with almost no radio support. The music worked because it wasn't performed. He'd lived the material, reported it straight, and the streets knew the difference.

The man who recorded 'Cop Killer' in 1992 has spent the last 26 years playing one on television. He joined Law & Order: SVU in season two for a four-episode deal and is still there in season 27, which makes him the longest-running male actor in a primetime scripted TV role in US history. The show reportedly pays around $250,000 per episode. Dick Wolf told him to just play himself as if he were a cop, which is either a great direction note or a great joke.

Born Tracy Lauren Marrow in Newark, he lost both parents to heart attacks by his early teens and moved to South Central LA to live with his aunt, where he joined the Rollin 30s Crips. His stage name is a tribute to Iceberg Slim, the pimp-turned-author whose monologues he memorized and performed for friends at Crenshaw High School. In Hawaii during his Army stint, he heard 'Rapper's Delight' on the radio and realized what he'd been doing for free could actually pay.