Ice-T: Rap is dominated by men

Ice-T has claimed that rap is still a very male-dominated industry.

The hip-hop heavyweight - who featured two female rappers, MC Lyte and Salt-N-Pepa's Salt in his directorial debut Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap - admitted that male stars tend to overpower females such as Queen Latifah and Nicki Minaj.

"I just think certain music will be more male, and others more female, kind of like how a lot of females don't do heavy metal or death metal. Hip-hop has always been very aggressive but then you have people that stand out like Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill. The girls who have been great in hip-hop have been tremendous - Queen Latifah is one of the best," he said.

Ice-T, whose real name is Tracy Marrow, offered some advice to budding female rappers.

"The trick to being a great female rapper - you have Nicki Minaj now and Lil Kim - is to attempt to have that female edge without becoming masculine, and that's difficult," he explained.

"A lot of girls who want to rhyme come to me and I'll say, 'You sound like a dude'. I don't know if that will really sell, because guys don't really want to buy [music from] a chick that sounds like a dude and girls can't really relate."

The rapper also defended his decision not to include certain stars like Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes in the film, which is in cinemas now.

"I went after people I knew, my friends, so I just opened up my address book and started calling people. Certain people were difficult to get - Jay-Z is busy, moving around the world and Queen Latifah was shooting a movie," he said.