If you've been listening to the new Body Count album Manslaughter and wondering why the punk metal band included not one, but two versions of the Jay-Z hit "99 Problems," well, frontman Ice-T feels bad for you, son.

"That's my record!" exclaimed the nearly six-foot-tall, muscle-rippled vocalist, who included "99 Problems" on his 1992 rap album Home Invasion 11 years before Jay-Z changed most of the lyrics and revamped it into a worldwide hit. "I wrote that with Brother Marquis. Then Chris Rock, who's a big fan of mine, took it to Rick Rubin and said, 'I think Jay-Z should remake this record.'"

While Jay-Z secured the necessary publishing rights from Warner Bros. to legally rework the song, he included Ice's shout-out "hit me!" and the main hook, "I got 99 problems but a b---- ain't one." Even so, he didn't give Ice-T props for writing the original. "I can't say he stole it," Ice-T told Yahoo Music. "He just did it and nobody said anything, so I didn't really take it as a dis. It's just one of those things."

During Body Count rehearsals, Ice-T's bandmates – lead guitarist Ernie C, guitarist Juan of the Dead, bassist Vincent Price, and drummer Ill Will – started breaking out "99 Problems" as a joke. At first, it was only a few riffs, then the song developed a new life. "I would f--k around and sing the original words, and suddenly everyone who knows Jay's version went, 'Yo, now the song makes sense because you're singing about a bunch of women. We never understood what Jay-Z was singing about.' When it came time to do the new album we said, 'Let's just throw it on there because it's cool.'"

It was also an experiment of sorts to see how many fans and jounalists were familiar with Ice-T's old rap catalog. "We definitely did it as a booby trap to catch people who don't know that it's not Jay-Z's song," said Ice. "So when they ask, 'Why'd Ice-T put Jay's song on there?' Somebody can slap the s--t out of them."

Ice-T laughed at the thought. Simulated violence entertains him, as does writing gross-out songs about dismemberment, street violence, and the kinds of crazy characters that inhabit horror movies. His is a multidimensional world. He retains the tough-guy tone he learned on the street in his youth, the twisted sense of humor he had when he released "Smoked Pork" – a skit about shooting policemen that appeared on the first Body Count album – and he's still motivated to write about the disturbing things he sees around him, as well as his violent fantasies.

However, having achieved wealth and success in music, television, and film, he's no longer mad at the same people or about the same subjects. And yes, the man who captured worldwide notoriety in 1992 for the song "Cop Killer" now plays sex crimes detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola on the hit TV series "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." So is it strange that the infamous cop killer now plays an officer for his day job?

"Hey, I never killed no cops. I love playing a cop, and back then I really didn't think 'Cop Killer' was that controversial," Ice-T explained. "I'm a fan of punk rock. Cops was always a fair target in punk. There was a hardcore group called Millions of Dead Cops. And when we did 'Cop Killer,' I didn't even know anyone would have a problem with it."

The firestorm erupted after a group of parents who wanted to keep albums with violent lyrics out of the hands of children boycotted Ice-T's label Warner Bros. The Body Count frontman eventually agreed to pull "Cop Killer" from the band's self-titled 1992 debut. However, the album was out for months before the complaints sprang up. The fuse burned slowly, and when the powder keg ignited, no one was more surprised by the fallout than the band.

"I toured all the way with Lollapalooza. No problems," Ice-T said. "'Cop Killer' was a protest record about someone who snapped and went on a binge. The thing I didn't realize was mainstream America goes crazy when you expose black anger to white kids. We let kids know 'we're not mad at you. We're mad at things.' White kids were like, 'We get it. We're mad at things, too.' And I was able to get 20,000 kids at Lollapalooza to shout 'f—k the police' all over America. That was the problem. When Sally at Stanford starts singing 'f—k the police,' parents freak the f—k out. But I never hated cops. I hated what some cops were doing. There's a big difference."