The 90’s saw several popular periods of rock music, hair metal was on it’s last feet at the
beginning of the decade, with grunge taking over in the early to mid 90’s. That transitioned into
post-grunge and pop rock and then nu-metal. Against the backdrop of rock music during
the decade was hip hop and straight up pop music. It was rare that an artist who was
dominant in one genre would try to reinvent themselves in another genre, but that’s what
rapper Vanilla Ice tried to go metal and that's what we're gonna explore in today's video. .
Music wasn’t always on the first choice of a career for rapper Vanilla Ice
who was born Robert Matthew Van Winkle in Dallas, Texas in 1967.
In his teenage years he was a successful motocross racer winning several championships,
but a broken ankle at age of 17 prematurely ended his career. He soon turned his attention to
music - being a fan of hip hop and dancing. Vanila Ice would tell the LA Times he danced to James
Brown records and lip-synced to Elvis Presley as a youngster. But he soon found his calling
in hip hop and started dancing with friends at local malls, & he would tell the LA Times
“I remember being alone a lot as a kid because I went to so many different schools,”
“I would always be the new jack and everybody’s eyes would be on me,
so I eventually decided to give them something to look at. I’d fix my hair and wear things that made
me stand out. And I got into the rapping and the break-dancing and beat-boxing" he'd say.
He would soon adopt the stage name Vanilla MC & it would be an appearance at Dallas disco called City
Lights that changed rappers life. owned by Tommy Quon who was managing a few acts at the time.
Quon would witness Vanilla MC at his club taking part in a talent contest and was so blown away he
signed the rapper to a contract the following day. Quon suggested he change his name to Vanilla Ice
and started to lineup concerts that would see him open for various rap acts including Public Enemy.
But much to Quon’s chagrin he was unsuccessful in getting record labels to pay attention.
A white rapper wasn’t exactly on their list of sought after acts.
Still believing in his talent, Quon forked the money to release Vanilla Ice’s debut album
Hooked on his own independent label and got a distribution deal through Ichiban records.
They would release a single a cover of Wild Cherry’s play that funky music witha tune called
ice ice baby as the b-side. The song eventually started getting airplay thanks to a DJ in Georgia
who played ice ice baby instead of the cover and it spread like wildfire from there. Quon soon
spent $8,000 to record a video for the track Ice Ice Baby only increasing the rapper’s popularity..
SBK records took notice and signed Vanilla Ice. They re-released Hooked with a new
name “To The Extreme” and he soon started opening for the likes of MC Hammer. It was
a tour that saw tension between the rappers with Vanilla Ice knocking MC Hammer from the
number 1 spot on the billboard charts. Quon would tell the LA Times about the
feud with MC Hammer saying “By the end, we were selling as many T-shirts as Hammer at the shows
and I think that bothered them. They didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening" he'd say.
Ice Ice Baby would go on to become the first number one hip hop single in history to top
the billboard hot 100 charts and To The Extreme became a global phenomenon selling over 15,000,000
copies worldwide and spending four months at the number 1 spot on the billboard album charts.
Vanilla Ice soon got his own movie Cool As Ice, and provided the lead single for the Teenage
mutant Ninja turtles 2 movie and even dated Madonna. Add to that, endorsement deals for nike
and pepsi, things seemed to be going his way.. But despite his newfound success there was a growing
backlash against the rapper. A lot of critics and rappers criticized him for cultural appropriation.
In addition to that, ice ice baby soon drew the attention of rock band queen
who claimed the rapper stole the bass line for under pressure without asking for permission
or fairly compensating the band. Remember this great quote from him? We sampled it from them,
but it's not the same bass line. That's the way there's goes. Our goes. .
I’ve done a whole story on this feud between the rapper and queen, the link is down below.
In addition to that, it came to light that the rapper’s record label fabricated details
of his childhood claiming he grew up on the rough streets of Miami and raced for Honda
when in fact he grew up in the suburbs of Dallas and had a middle class upbringing and
Honda had never heard of him before. The label wanted to give the rapper more street cred.
For the next several years Vanilla Ice would tour relentlessly, and by 1993 he needed a break.
He became a vegetarian, a rastafarian and rode motocross and recording his follow up
album mind blowin, which came out in 1994, but his 15 minutes of fame seemed to have faded
as his follow up record only moved a measly 42,000 copies and failed to chart.
The rapper looked back expressing regret over taking every opportunity that was
offered to him telling the LA Times in 1998
My first record made me millions of dollars, and I didn’t spend it, either. I had a boat in my
backyard, a $600,000 car--all that stuff--now I’m set for life, which enables me to do what I want.
The first time around, I played a puppet role for the record label. I was 19 years old and
doing a full-on hip-hop thing--playing for black audiences, opening for Ice-T. The record label
told me they wanted me to take it to the pop market, and at first I refused. But at that time,
I was just barely surviving--I was three payments behind on my car--and they handed me a check for
one-point-five with my name already on it, and I said, “What do you want me to do?”
So I did it. Then, it was all about money. I was just like Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money" he'd
say. Following the failure of his second record Vanilla Ice went into a deep depression and turned
to drugs to cope, but like a lot of people down on their luck he found religion. He would tell mtv in
1998 "God has blessed me in more ways than one," "I found God when I found myself on the floor
with friends dumping cold water on me. I overdosed one night and woke up the next day and found God,"
By the mid 90’s the rapper was picking up the pieces of his life and started getting into real
estate, investing, racing jet skis and getting back into motocross and for a short period of
time had a grunge outfit named pickin scabz.. The rapper found a new home with Republic Records.
It would be the label's head Monty Lipman who told the rapper about producer Ross Robinson.
Vanilla Ice would tell Iowa State Daily in 1998
“I wanted to express myself in a very intense way, and there was no way that was going to happen with
a drum machine,” “basically I’m bored with drum machines and samples and stuff. With a band,
they can build that energy around me. The rapper would invite the prospective
producer to his home going on to say “Ross walks in and sees my motocross trophy and
he’s a motocross racer himself,” he said. “We were clicking right off of the bat,
we had something in common. He was like ‘Yeah man, I’d really love to do your record.’. I
flew to LA right away and within a month and a half we had the album finished, completed."
Robinson at the time was one of the hottest producers in rock n' roll working with a variety
of nu-metal acts including Korn, but It was a risky move for Robinson telling the new york times
“People kept saying to me ‘It might hurt your name, it might hurt your reputation’. I said,
‘I’m doing it then.’ It’s the most punk rock thing you could do.” Robinson was
known for taking people’s hardships and pain and turning it into music, something the producer
thought he could do with the rapper. . For Vanilla Ice it was difficult to dig
deep and open up about his demons recalling to cnn “It wasn't intended to be so dark.”
“I opened up to Ross and I told him a lot of things that happened to me in the past,
it was like, really deep conversation, and he was like, ‘You should write about that.’
And I was like, ‘dude!’, I didn't want people to judge me for that. But he was right. This
record was like total therapy. I had to tap into these moments in my life, I’m free now" he'd say.
Once news broke that Ross Robinson was working with Vanilla Ice on a nu-metal style album,
many were left scratching their heads. There were rumors that members of Korn and even lenny
kravtiz who was the godfather to Vanilla Ice’s daughter would appear on the album,
but both rumors turned out to be false with Korn’s management even issuing a statement saying
the rumors were not true. Instead, Jimmy pop of the bloodhound gang would show up on the album.
Robinson would assemble a backing band that was made of drummer Shannon Larkin
and guitarist Sonny Mayo, Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland’s brother Scott
of Big Dumb Face fame on keyboards and future Puddle Of Mudd bassist Doug Ardito.
Larkin would claim to Modern Drummer magazine in 2006 that he was and i quote
“Proud of that one. That was a killer record. Producer Ross Robinson is very demanding when it
comes to drums in the studio. Everything had to be 110% for that guy, and I love him for that."
Ahead of the album being released Ice was touring across the united states and was met with a lot
of success. He started out slow doing 1-2 shows a week eventually working up to 3-4 gigs a week
playing sold out theatres in places like omaha nebraska and denton, texas.
Josh hunt of avalanche productions who promoted the tour across the midwest would tell MTV
"We just stumbled into it and it just felt right," "The guy sold, what, 7 million records?
All the shows have been sold out, people are definitely interested." MTV would also
interview a woman who was the head of vanilla ice’s fanclub who took issue with the the rapper
being labeled a one hit wonder pointing to the success of his second album overseas.
So what type of people were showing up to a vanilla ice's concert in the 1998 well he would
tell LA Times "Not the crowd I played to before. A lot of young girls still come out to the shows,
but they probably wished I’d made another pop record because this may be a little too
hard for them. Now my crowd is the body-piercing and tattoo crowd. A lot of people are buying the
new record and showing up to the shows, and it’s good to see so many enjoying the music"he'd say.
In early 1998 Ice told "Rolling Stone Online" that his upcoming album would be and i quote
high-energy hip-hop effort, but months later his label would refer to it as and i quote
"aggressive rock."In the run up to the album’s release there was a lot of news reporting
claiming the album would blend the styles of vanilla ice’s rapping and nu-metal act Korn.
The album titled hard to swallow would come out on October 20,
1998. To promote the album Republic Records told MTV News that they believe in the quote
"John Travolta Theory" in resurrecting Ice's stalled career. Travolta's equally floundering
reputation was revived by director Quentin Tarantino's mid 90's film "Pulp Fiction."
But the theory didn’t seem to work out this time as Hard to Swallow was a commercial flop
not charting in any countries. The album received stinging reviews with Rolling Stone stating that
and i quote “Nothing can redeem Ice’s whack boasting" while New Times magazine called it
“Stupid, exploitative, derivative rap metal by the man who once did nearly irreparable
damage to hip hop,” Since it’s release the album has made many worst of lists.
Shortly after the album's release, Vanilla Ice would soon lose his recording contract
and he wouldn't release his follow up record until three years later 2001's Bi-polar
which happened to featured a voice message from Ross Robinson and the track crash and burn.That
does it for today's video guys thanks for watching .be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.