The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice | Hacker News Reader

The Mostly True Story of Vanilla Ice

theringer.com

197 pointssmollett73 comments

My brother-in-law, who has Down Syndrome, went to see him in Radio City Music Hall a couple of years ago. What? Vanilla Ice is performing in 2019? He gets no media exposure and scores no points with the critics by going out and performing his cheesy early hits for a few thousand fans, so at the time I assumed he needed the money. We dropped my brother-and-law off and next thing you know, there's a video on Facebook where he's up on stage and Vanilla Ice is sharing the mic with him. And now I read he's been doing fine for money all along. Much respect to the man for valuing the pleasure he brings to other people, independent of the money.

In his hometown he was known for bringing some speakers outside and playing impromptu block parties for anyone around.

I watched him live in Europe couple of years back. The problem it that a lot of folk see him as a single hit artist.

He has an interview with Joe Rogan that’s pretty interesting. You may enjoy it.

Link? Can't find any immediate search hits

I couldn't find this Joe Rogan podcast (don't think he ever recorded one) but this interview with Dan Patrick is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyIcu-mpWA0

I don't think he does..

Yeah you’re right. I got confused with everlast come to think of it. I didn’t realize how similar they were until now. My apologies.

I realized I totally misremembered. I was thinking of the interview with Everlast. I apologize.

If you think he's a great musician, then know he is even better builder! For many years he had 2 companies in Miami flipping mansions, he even had his own show on TV. Some episodes show extreme complicated (engineering wise) rebuilt of houses and its always fun to watch before and after. Rob is definitely a man of many talents.

oh what a surprising collision of world :)

"we dropped my brother-and-law off"

This made me want to read the rest of your comment ;)

Hope you meant __brother-in-law__ though

This article is good but you can tell it was written by someone who was really young when Vanilla Ice came out. The pushback from the hip hop community was equal parts the lies and the really bad music. He tried to compare Ice to 3rd Base who were respected MCs at the time. Yeah MC Serch is known as a bit of a goofball now but back then he was respected rapper.

Vanilla Ice was making songs like Ninja Rap at the same time classics like Low End Theory, Death Certificate, De La Soul is Dead, Cypress Hill and 2Pacalype Now were coming out. Again, of course he was going to get push back. MC Hammer had the same pushback but not as bad as Vanilla Ice.

I think there was still debate back then over whether white people should/could rap. One way for MC Serch and others to get credibility was to say "I'm not like that other white rapper."

I read this and enjoyed it, especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc)..

After working with lots of artists over the years I tend to just think of them as instruments in an overall track, and their stories and narrative of the timelines is unreliable at best. I would really have liked more perspective in the story from the music producers POV, as I feel like I got a unique and more objective point of view seeing both the business, personal, public, and artistic side. While many of the rappers are just kind of lifestyle method actors, and as the years go by I wonder about these late stage interviews.

Interesting article though

> especially the parallels for me as the music producer who found the first popular white girl rapper: "Kreayshawn" and produced her first few tracks ("Bumpin Bumpin", "Gucci Gucci", etc)..

Wait... you produced those early Kreayshawn joints? HN is a wild place hah.

> I would really have liked more perspective in the story from the music producers POV

This is pretty much how I feel about every piece of media on music/artists/bands/etc. Song Exploder is one of the few that puts that process & the accompanying story front and center. It makes the content far more interesting IMO.

> "'Gucci Gucci' is completely traumatizing. When that song comes on, it makes my ears feel like they're bleeding," Zolot said, explaining that the track itself has had a big negative impact on her. "Like, it makes me feel like I'm gonna die. It gives me a panic attack hearing that song."

> Part of it has been the pressure of trying to make another hit "as big as 'Gucci Gucci'" in subsequent years. However, the bigger issue that's continued to goad her is the fact that she receives no royalties and is still in debt to Sony for $800,000 for it — something she addressed in a string of tweets asking people to stop buying and streaming the track.

Maybe, just maybe, thinking of vocal artists as just instruments in an overall track is a mistake?

It's cool and all that you "found" her but it doesn't sound like she was very happy with how things turned out. Having someone else in the studio who didn't think she was just an "instrument" might have been nice.

Just saying.

I think you are missing the idea of what I was just trying to say about how music producers, especially in the traditional pop realm worked and thought about vocals in a song.

And you misinterpreting my words and giving them meaning in a way they dont.

Aside from my meaning, she has worked with many producers besides me, as well as managers and A/R people. I know for a fact how much fun she was having in 2010-2012 or so. I watched the narrative change over the years from "I am this hard rapper from Oakland" to "I am an artist, and DJ, and a rapper" to finally "I never wanted to be a rapper and the industry took advantage of me and others like me" .. That gradient is a bit more complex and long, but that is the sum of it. Narratives change with success and popularity.

Have you produced any other major tracks for rappers? Where can I hear more of your stuff dude?? Thanks for sharing your perspective on HN. I'm more of an old school head listening to Nas and MF DOOM, but mumble rap has grown on me somehow...

I actually hate those songs I made for her, I made songs for lesser known artists, and lots of remixes. I used the name Adeptus and DK Domino.. I did lots of soundtracks for television shows and films and a few porns actually haha.. I like mostly old school bboy/freestyle music

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGimKOsZx2R4pByZjfiZXcg/vid...

I have this youtube channel I update every few years but mostly I am not very active

Appreciate your perspective, and thanks so kindly for your post. As a classically trained vocalist, that perspective makes me feel you are not the kind of person who I would like to work with; or a person I could

When I produce my own music, I have the privilege of treating my own vocals as...somewhat 'just another instrument' is a blessing and a curse. I often end up doing anywhere from 30-50 takes for a verse, and 'Kubricking' myself like that is just part of my process that I have the luxury and privilege of going through because I live the studio I also produce other artists out of.

I can get much more into their stories and narratives by treating them as a little bit higher in focus than the rest of the track.

This is totally spoken out of personal experience and in total respect for what you do. Just saying that I really make a specific effort to treat vocalists as the real people they are since most of the other instruments in my track are often electronic.

i meant when I am in my daw or groovebox

Can you share some interesting behind the scenes stories of anything you've been a part of in the music scene for us HN fans :)

Yeah I wish I could say some juicy stuff.. I think I might after reading this article, but not in the comments. Maybe I will write about it on my future blog.

I worked with an artist called DMX Krew, in the UK a lot. He is like an old school(not so much to me, as I am 35) electro music producer/performer. And when my tracks with Kreayshawn popped off I had different fun opportunities for a bit. VIce Italy flew me to Milan to DJ a party for 400 euros, and the marketing was that I was DMX's producer (like the rapper DMX), which I was not.. But I just sort of pretended to be, and I during my set I would randomly drop in songs by DMX just to get people excited.

Gucci Gucci knocks. TYFYS

I heard "Ice Ice Baby" about 1000 times when I used to roller skate, and loved it. I found a used CD of "To The Extreme" later and snapped it up. What a disappointment - not only didn't the rest of the songs live up to the hit, but even the hit didn't. The version I had been hearing must have been a different mix from a single, and the version from the album wasn't nearly as good.

I was 10 when "Ice Ice Baby" came out, and thinking back to that time reminded me of an old memory I haven't recalled for a long time. One time someone played a cassette of To The Extreme from the beginning (I forget the setting; maybe I was hanging out with a friend from school), and I remember hearing an ascending sequence of tones (probably sine waves), each one an octave higher than the previous, before the first song started. Of all the many cassettes I ever listened to as a kid, this might have been one of two or three that ever started this way. Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? What were those tones for, and why did this cassette in particular have them? From what I've read, I gather that this particular cassette might have been a copy made on someone's home tape deck. Or did legitimate commercial copies have those tones too?

</tangent>

Did well-organized tape copiers realize that they needed some kind of gain control when mixing tapes?

Speculating wildly that this kind of calibration at the beginning of the tape could be like an analog ancestor to 'ReplayGain'.

What you heard is probably the xdr test tone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR_(audio)

Yeah, I think that's it. I guess it wasn't strictly octaves after all. Hey, I was 10 or 11 when I heard it. My guess at the time was that the tones were a tuning reference for anyone who wanted to play along with the tape. I now realize they would have been really bad for that.

How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones? I should clarify that at home we mostly listened to religious albums; many were released on small labels, but some were distributed by A&M. So maybe the test tones were more common in mainstream music than I realized.

>How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones?

Anecdotal: I think it was common. I knew what you were asking about as soon as I read your comment. I used to add it my own mixtapes as a kid.

Whoa. This is fascinating.

Also, the existence of XDR was also fascinating to me.

Did vinyl ever have such a calibration equivalent?

It's nice to have a retrospective article like this that kinda post-mortems what happened in pop culture way back then.

The article focuses on hip hop but pop music was swinging towards the grunge era at this time, and there was a focus on authenticity (the article mentions the milli vanilli fiasco).

With In Living Color and Arsenio Hall both calling him fake, he was fucking doomed

Hip hop evolution TV miniseries on Netflix does a really nice history on it from the very early days.

The Chuck D and Ice T cosign was completely unknown to me. I knew how he came up, and I knew he was well schooled on the rap game, but that tidbit was important for me to know.

Me neither, I knew Everlast used to do stuff for Ice T but wasn't aware of him

Vanilla put on a helluva show last summer at the PNE in Vancouver. He got about 50 girls from the crowd onstage to dance for Ice, Ice Baby. He's a very good showman. Can get the crowd laughing and having a good time

He came to South Africa a few years ago too, after doing an ad for a beer company here. I believe it was a big success.

Great guy. He played himself in That's My Boy (2012) together with Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg. One of the funniest movies I've seen. Vanilla Ice was working at a fast food counter. Here's a scene where he's introduced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ea8diZ5M8

'The question of selling out is so obsolete that Travis Scott—who never met a beat, ad-lib, or nickname that he couldn’t steal—can do a nihilistically shameless cross-promotional deal with McDonald’s. And rather than catch flak for partnering with a soulless corporate behemoth, millions of teenagers treat his pseudo Happy Meal like the holy grail'.

Great article, Ice could have been the show bizzy Elvis of Hip Hop with his natural talent at the time but management totally screwed up his presentation, he reminded me of the Gary Glitter of rap at his heights...

Just goes to show how important presentation is in the music world...

Comparing anyone to Mr Glitter comes with some less-than-savoury baggage. Instead, here's a link to an article describing the second careers of ten other famous musicians - https://www.considerable.com/work/second-careers/famous-musi...

Gary Glitter was wildly popular in the UK top 10 and was subsequently very big on the university circuit. He was then publicly disgraced and imprisoned, but that was well after the period I mentioned. I am not a fan of cancelling people's creative output because of criminality. The work - by many showbiz people - stands.

I get where you're coming from. The Glitter Band put out some excellent songs both when fronted my Mr G and without him, but none of their material gets played on retro music radio stations nowadays.

I think the trigger for my comment was "[...] but management totally screwed up his presentation, he reminded me of the Gary Glitter of rap at his heights" - the article makes it clear how much damage was caused to Vanilla Ice by his management's one page "resume", alongside other decisions. Whereas GG's (scandalously overdue) downfall was entirely his own fault.

> I am not a fan of cancelling people's creative output because of criminality. The work - by many showbiz people - stands.

Agreed!

My only live experience of Vanilla Ice was when he did a Christmas Pantomime in Chatham in Kent. He played Captain Hook. [1]. It was actually a lot of fun. All through the show they teased Ice Ice Baby ("Captain - the pirates are overheating. They need some rice, rice baby" etc etc).

He eventually performed his hit at the end. He definitely looked like he was enjoying himself and didn't take himself too seriously.

He also used to be in a tv show on cable channel called Men and Motors, reviewing the in-car entertainment in young people's cars with Jordan (a glamour model/reality tv star). It was called Ice with Jordan [2]

I really feel I could do a page of footnotes here for non-Brits explaining what a pantomime is in the UK, equivalent US towns to Chatham, who Jordan is etc etc.

[1] https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/rapper-vanilla-ice-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJXJH_flgKWg_VhVHpDLu...

I'd never heard about the Jim Carrey routine. Great story, thanks for the post OP!

I was in stitches watching that. So good. Never knew about it either! That would have gone so viral if social media was a thing back then. Absolutely classic.

My favorite line in all of this is when he is getting grilled by Arsenio Hall about his background and says “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it’s where you’re at.”

I think that critics in the US are too obsessed with the idea of “authenticity”. Authenticity can be a useful device for quality control, and many authentic things are truly great. But it’s also often used to make people feel guilty for enjoying things which are inauthentic, which is really unfortunate.

Vanilla Ice is a talented guy, and “Ice Ice Baby” brought me a ton of joy in my youth. He really did not deserve the amount of ridicule that he received in the popular media.

“Authenticity” is and has always been a successful method of "Tribe Security". Where in largely white Rock & Roll, it is social suicide to "sell out" by licensing one's music for commercial jingles; in Hip Hop this is called "getting paid" and treated as "knowing one's power and position". Authenticity really is knowing when to exhibit the expected Tribe Signaling. Having knowledge of a Tribe's nonverbal signaling enables one to infiltrate any social group lacking formal security.

> In 1990, there was no star bigger than the man born Robert Van Winkle

MC Hammer begs to differ XD

He killed Avdol and Iggy :(

Sad yare yare sounds

Looks like even here one can’t be safe against JoJo references…

Sound like he was a bit oh a hacker!

A few thoughts here:

re: Chuck D and Ice T(as well as J Prince/Rapalot) wanting to sign VI. I think it speaks to the business acumen of Chuck D and Ice T as well. They knew that at that time to truly break through they needed a hip hop elvis and they were thinking of who that would be.

re: media hit pieces Sidebar, it also speaks to how much power the media can have over someone when they aim their power at you. The Dallas Morning News article was a hit piece that may or may not have been justified.

I was around 14-15 at the time, I was hugely into hip hop back then and while I wont lie and say Ice Ice baby was a bad song I think the rest of the album was largely forgettable. Ice Ice Baby definitely captured the vibe going on in music at the time. The sample era was still figuring out the rules and I think the Biz Markie "Thou shalt not steal" ruling had yet to happen...

which brings me to my next point: Credit to the article for (correctly) pointing out the ridiculousness of 3rd bass using "sledgehammer" to back the track that makes fun of the song using "under pressure". I guess the key difference here is that 3rd bass probably licensed the sample to prevent litigation, but that probably wasnt because 3rd bass thought of that. The labels knew when they needed to clear a sample, I think SBK thought they may be able to get away with it until they sold 10 million copies...

re: appropriation The article points out that this was one of the first large scale reactions to cultural appropriation. In fairness to Vanilla Ice, he was a young kid that had something huge happen to him so he "trusted" the record label and the marketers to do right by him. They didnt.(and usually dont). Had Vanilla Ice dressed more like he did in the Ice Ice Baby Video he would have caught less flak for sure. MC Search (to me anyway) was the other side of the same coin to me and just as ridiculous. He mimicked the look of a B-Boy just as extremely as Vanilla Ice mimicked MC Hammer. They were both ridiculous, absurd even. Neither one of them were authentic, and I still think MC Search is guilty of it to this day.(seen some interviews, hes mellowed but still...) Also take into consideration how Russel Simmons signed 3rd bass to replace the beastie boys. I think that probably didnt work out how he thought as 3rd bass never really sold huge numbers. Pete Nice never really got too deep in the appropriation, and to me seems like he just was a dude that appreciated the art and tried to contribute. 3rd bass was a label creation as Pete Nice and MC Search werent really friends at all. I think Pete Nice left hip hop to run a sports memorabilia store or something like that.

I think there is a new wave of the same problem (As was mentioned in the article) with people like Post Malone.

Fame is a weird road to navigate, and Im not sure everyone makes it to the other side without some scars. Vanilla Ice certainly has his share. He also has done some boneheaded things, but it seems he may be ok after all. the Vanilla Ice project and holding on to most of his money point to some sort of acumen there. I also think he is finally ok with being "that guy" and owning his ridiculousness. When that happens what other people say cant really get to you. His story could have ended up way differently.

> Invited on The Arsenio Hall Show, Ice walked blithely into the lion’s den... It remains a brutal interview to watch. You can practically see Ice’s career leave his body....

Way to exaggerate! The interview was very cordial, considering how much hate the guy was getting at the time.

Completely unrelated, but want to watch a brutal interview? Check Cathey Newman interviewing Jordan Peterson (who still managed to come out relatively unscathed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

That's a long article - anyone want to take a stab at tl;dr?

Vanilla had just as much if not more street cred than other white rappers, but due to bad timing and worse marketing he got skewered as "fake" and that nuked his career.

Another interesting subtext, which goes throughout the piece, is the perception and place of southern hip hop. Especially during that time. Had he come out after No Limit, Cash Money, Outkast, Goodie Mob, UGK, 3-6 Mafia, etc. he might've had a chance.

But once it came out that dude was from Dallas, there was not much to do. He was in an genre that placed prime importance on (perceived) authenticity.

No one respected: 1.) White rappers 2.) The south generally

At the time, from the south, there was the Geto Boys... and the Geto Boys. That was it. And Geto Boys are from Houston's 5th ward. Not some suburb in Dallas.

The author of the article made a very prescient point on how Eminem was tightly leashed to Dre when he came out. Eminem was packed as 'This white rapper who has a a good cadence and flow, and did you hear Dre co-signged? Dre, Dre, Dre. Yeah, his lyrics are kinda corny. But Dre features on the second song of his first big album. Dre, Dre, Dre.'

2 Live Crew were from the South, weren't they? isn't Miami considered South in US?

Also he was a great dancer, but just an okay rapper.

Very well worth the read, a summary can't do justice to the author's work.

Maybe it’s just me, but I got about 20% in to the article and had to stop. These articles are written for word count alone - that has to be it. Because otherwise there is no reason to jump a head and back over and over again.

Tell a story in order!

It's a particular style of editorial you often find in Rolling Stone or other biographical works. They're trying to set a mood and paint a picture. To transport you to the time and place.

It's magical, but it's not for everybody.

I read the Wikipedia article [1] instead. I figured it ought to contain the relevant historical notes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla_Ice

it seems to include an eclectic amount of music-references for just filling that wordcount.

Yeah I sort of felt a bit jargoned out. But probably a great read if you were there and into music at the time

> It was the winter of 1987-88 in South Dallas, or maybe it was the following summer … Tussles were frequent, and being Texas, half the club came strapped.

Texas did not pass its concealed-carry law until 1995. In fact, in 1991 its legislature considered a gun-control law! Great writing, but I wonder at how accurate the rest of the details are.

How many people going to a nightclub in a rough part of town frequented by an assortment of career criminals and associates people are going to care?

Hmmm...

If you're saying this with no sarcasm at all, you might be in a bit of a bubble.

While it may have very well been illegal, you can be wholeheartedly assured that the statement of non-negligible strappedness in a South Dallas club circa late '80s is true.

Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if everybody followed laws. Maybe. Probably not though, if you dig into laws...

The only detail I found questionable (and have the knowledge to do so) is the labelling of Forest Lane as "South Dallas". That's pretty much as far north as you can get in Dallas, notwithstanding a weird chunk that goes north near Carrollton/Farmers Branch.

Yes, and back then that would have been way north Dallas. Forest lane in the 80s was for sure the biggest "cruising" street in the entire metroplex. Funny to think of Vanilla Ice being there, with people listening to Van Halen, Def Leppard....and then this dude with sculpted hair in track suits rapping.

I also wouldn't have considered Farmers Branch to be an inner-ring suburb — my recollection from the 90s was that it was way out in the sticks. But maybe I misremember.

Not sure where you're from, but in Texas carrying firearms is a cultural thing. People didn't wait until concealed carry was passed to start holding. Concealed carry in Texas legalized something people were already doing

In the streets of most big Texas cities, you can just go ahead and assume about half of the people are holding.

Further, concealed carry doesn't cover bars/night clubs. If a place derives more than 51% of its revenue from the sale of on-site consumption of alcohol, you can't carry no matter what license you have.

That's ignoring the fact that a not insignificant amount of people (especially Black young men) in South Dallas are formerly incarcerated or in some form of the justice system. Especially during the late 80's during the height of the crack epidemic. So they're not legally allowed to carry anyway.

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