CONFIDENT ICE-T MIXING IT UP WITH ROLE ON NBC'S `PLAYERS'.

Byline: Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

If you're looking for modesty, you've come to the wrong guy.

Rapper/movie star/TV star/author Ice-T, whose new show ``Players'' debuts at 8 tonight on NBC, will tell you, straight out, that he's been batting a thousand.

``Everything I've tried has been a hit,'' he says. ``I could tell somebody I want to do a stand-up comedy special, and I bet I'd get a meeting. The days of doubting me are kind of over.''

And how. Ice-T came up with the idea of ``Players,'' and pitched it to superproducer Dick Wolf (``New York Undercover,'' ``Law & Order''). The story - convicts who've gone straight now help cops catch the bad guys. ``It's kind of like `Mission: Impossible.' We don't actually kill the bad guys, but we put them in a situation where the cops can take them out.'' And Ice-T was intrigued by the idea of people operating outside the law.

``That's the most exciting part of any cop show - when the cop throws his badge down and says, `I'm gonna do it this way.' ''

If Ice-T comes with more clout than the average actor (and every actor, he says, has an idea for a series), he also comes with more of a history. His song ``Cop Killer,'' with its chorus of ``die, pigs, die,'' touched off a furor five years ago, with the record company eventually pulling the song, at Ice-T's request, and releasing him from his contract.