Riffs / Meet Mr Angry: Tori Amos defends the controversial rap 'KKK Bitch' by Ice-T

We've got to start from the premise that the girl in the song is consenting to what's happening. All the people that are up in arms about the album - the Christians, the cops, the 'Mothers Against' groups - had better listen to what it really says.

The narrator, the Ice-T persona, is describing his affair with the daughter of a Ku-Klux-Klan wizard. She's this blue-eyed blonde, he's a black man. The man wants the girl so he can get at her father - his ideal would be for the wizard to end up with a little black grandchild - and she's doing it to get at her father too. They go to a cross-burning meeting, dressed in their hoods so no one can tell he's black, and have sex on the spot.

Ice-T's got an incredible sense of humour, but it doesn't quite match his anger. In the rest of the album, you see a lot of hate for his mother. He's angry because she taught him to be racist and he's trying not to be what he hates.

'KKK Bitch' is a real balls-out record. Its bottom end (drums and bass) crawls down your throat like Tabasco sauce; it lets you know it's there. He combined rap and metal, black and white, the way Anthrax and Public Enemy did on their tour. But it's not just rage to get attention, you can trace it to its seed. There'll only be communication in the world if anger gets released, and you can do it creatively like this, or destructively. He makes blacks look at their prejudices too.

Nobody, though, asks why he's angry. His honesty makes people nervous, and they focus on the bad language instead. If anything doesn't fit into their little belief system, they'll picket it.

'KKK Bitch' is on Body Count (Warner Brothers CD 7599268782)

(Photograph omitted)