Ice-T always manages to say and do things he knows won’t fly, then act like he has no “freedom of speech” when people refuse to do business with him. He first came to prominence as one of the first gangster rappers — all fans of hip-hop owe him some degree of respect for that — but he’s only gotten worse as he’s gotten richer.

His new record, called “Gangster Rap” though he’s had loads of money for 20 years, features a cover photo of him and his stripper wife Coco nude (though you can’t see any parts). Some record stores are refusing to stock it.

Fortunately, this time he’s sparing us the lecture about how our freedom is dwindling. The only comment in the article is: “What can I say, I have been doing these kinds of things for years…You should see the picture when Coco’s leg is not there.”

It’s inevitable that it will come up, though, so once and for all: Freedom of speech is protected by the government. So is freedom of association. If you don’t want to associate with someone because of their speech — say they wrote a really terrible punk song and called it “Cop Killer” just to get attention, or they put their 50-year-old naked body on the cover of a record — that’s your right.

And please, once you’ve played a police officer on Law & Order: SVU and taught rich New York middle schoolers how to bust rhymes, don’t come back at us with an album called “Gangster Rap.”

On a side note, this is a lot of musical output for the year, as he brought Body Count (the “band” that recorded “Cop Killer”) back earlier. My favorite part of this review:

“Sure, it’s mildly funny, for about three minutes, to listen to a 48-year-old Ice-T ranting about running the streets and yowling off-key about terrorism, girlfriends, and stalking hot chicks. But even if the band could write a song to save its life - which it can’t - Ernie C’s guitar tone is nothing short of embarrassing, bar riffs crackling through demo-grade fuzz buried in the back of a mix that cranks up every canned drum sound and every overblown nugget of wisdom from Ice.”

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.