In a new interview with The Guardian, rapper Ice T shared his thoughts on working with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour in a new version of ‘Comfortably Numb.’
“Usually our collabs come from knowing people and being friends. Like Amy Lee from Evanescence came about because Vince [Price, bass] was working with them on the road. Having Dave Gilmour on the new record was a long shot, though,” the rapper explained.
“It started with me wanting to do ‘Comfortably Numb,’ because I believe right now we are all comfortably numb – you can watch someone get set on fire on television and then just start watching the football game,” he continued. “We did the song and Pink Floyd’s publisher just said ‘no, no way.’ My manager reached out to David Gilmour, and the next thing we get a call saying: ‘I want to play on the record.’ I’m sure there’s purists that might hate the song, but f*ck them.”
The new version of the hit song dropped on September 20, and it includes Gilmour’s guitar work, with the strong sound of Body Count. Ice-T also added new lyrics to the song.
Ice-T explained what the song means to him: “For me ‘Comfortably Numb’ is an introspective song—it’s me acknowledging that I’m older now. I’m telling the younger generation, you’ve got two choices: you can keep the fire burning or you can give up.”
David Gilmour called this new version of the song ‘radical’ and said, “The words really struck me. It astonishes me that a tune I wrote almost 50 years ago is back with this great new approach. They’ve made it relevant again.”
Ice-T also mentioned in another interview that Pink Floyd was unsure about letting him remake the song at first.
Body Count also announced their new album, ‘Merciless.’ The album will come out on November 22. Their last album, ‘Carnivore,’ was released in 2020.