We’re a little late to this whole “Ice-T tries coffee for the first time” party, but now that we’re here, we don’t want to leave. The original video by Coffee Meets Bagel—the dating app who put the rapper-turned-actor up to the challenge—was posted a month ago, but Ice-T’s reaction to his first sip is so pure it bears bringing back up. He is all of us at the start of our coffee journey.

For his first ever taste of coffee in his 60 years on this earth, Ice-T does the unadvisable thing and dives straight into coffee by taking it black. No cream, no sugar. I say “unadvisable” because this is how I had my first taste of coffee as well, though mine came at a much younger age, when I thought I would be a “big kid” if I took a pull off of Mom’s morning cuppa. It went about as well as expected.

So what was Ice’s response to his maiden coffee voyage? “It tastes like water, with something… another taste kicked in later,“ a phrase that is now the gold standard against which all Brewers Cup flavor calls will be judged.

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“I can tell you this’ll pretty much be the last time I drink black coffee.”

Were that the end of the story, though, there would be no story; a guy whose name bears a striking resemblance to a non-coffee beverage not drinking a coffee beverage hardly makes the editorial cut. But a second video, this one released by BuzzFeed, finds Ice making the second step in the journey: “[putting] some shit in it.” The shit, of course, being cream—which he has also never had before!?!—and sugar. Sugar alone didn’t quite turn him into a coffee drinker but the magical alchemy of cream and sugar gives Ice-T (and all of us by proxy, really) that special moment of realization—seen in the in Buzzfeed video at around the 1:20 mark—one which we all know so well, that coffee in the right circumstances can be pretty, pretty, pretty good.

“Coffee, sugar, and cream: not bad.”

Don’t be surprised if Sargent Fin Tutuola starts appearing in Law and Order: SVU episodes with increasingly smaller coffee cups: first a 20oz Starbucks cup with a little whip on top, then a 12oz no whip, next maybe a 6oz cappuccino, until finally Tutuola is walking around crime scenes with his own demitasse (because he knows espresso to-go is a cardinal sin but there are perps to be caught).

Or maybe not. Either way, we’ll always have this video. It’s the pure wholesomeness (and a few curses) that the coffee world needs right now.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

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