The album, especially tracks like "6 'N the Morning", is considered to have defined the gangsta rap genre. Ice-T claims that this would be his first hip hop album to be carrying a parental advisory warning label,[2] although, it was years before the industry-standard explicit-lyrics sticker was developed and Too $hort's first album that also had to be carried with an "Explicit Lyrics" warning back in 1985[citation needed]. The 1988 CD release included four bonus tracks.
Ice-T stated on his autobiography that Seymour Stein took the exception to the song "409" for the line "Guys grab a girl, girls grab a guy/If a guy wants a guy, please take it outside", which he saw as homophobic.[3] Ice-T insisted that those lines were not meant to be homophobic, but simply a statement of his own preferences.[3] An article by Dennis Hunt noted that this lyric "may rub gays the wrong way" in an interview on the album's release.[4] Ice-T would later become one of the first hardcore rappers to condemn homophobia.[5]
In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave Rhyme Pays a "B" and credited DJ Afrika Islam for helping flesh out Ice T's crime-themed raps: "Can't know whether his streetwise jabs at Reagan and recidivism will make a permanent impression on his core audience, but his sexploitations and true crime tales are detailed and harrowing enough to convince anybody he was there."[8] According to AllMusic's Alex Henderson, "the West Coast was well on its way to becomining a crucial part of hip-hop" when Rhyme Pays was released.[6]Los Angeles Times writer Dennis Hunt said the album helped popularize gangsta rap.[9]
