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Vanilla Ice
Background information
Birth name	Robert Matthew Van Winkle
Also known as	V-Ice, The Iceman, Bi-Polar
Born	October 31, 1967 (1967-10-31) (age 40) Dallas, Texas
Genre(s)	Hip hop Nu Metal Rapcore Alternative Metal
Occupation(s)	Rapper Singer Actor
Years active	1988–present
Label(s)	SBK
Website	VanillaIce.com

Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), better known as Vanilla Ice, is a Grammy Award nominated, American Music Award winning American rapper and actor known mostly for the 1990 single "Ice Ice Baby."

He found major mainstream success, but his success lasted only about one year, and his rapid fall from popularity remains one of the most notorious in recent decades. Though Van Winkle has continued making music, he has yet to recapture anything approaching the level of mainstream success which he once enjoyed.

Van Winkle was born at Dallas' Baylor Hospital to Camilla Beth Van Winkle (née Dickerson), a secretary, and part-time private music teacher, and Dallas, Texas-born William Basil Van Winkle,.^[1] He attended R. L. Turner High School in Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas, Texas.

He became the main attractions of many clubs in the Dallas area in the late 80's, with his freestyling and dancing. He was mostly doing 'black' clubs and it was mentioned that he was the only caucasian in the club while performing. He, and his group of friends (that would DJ and dance with him) did shows for Public Enemy.

In 1989, Van Winkle was represented by Jay King of Dallas, Texas as part of the rap group Vanilla Ice, Chante, Ambiance, LaRue and New Choice.^[2] Van Winkle's first foray into the music industry is the little-known rap album Hooked, released in 1989 on an independent label. It sold about 48,000 copies -- successful for an independent release, though Hooked is still a rarity and something of a collector's item among fans.

His next album, To the Extreme, released in 1990, contained mostly new versions of the same songs as Hooked. The album featured Vanilla Ice's best-known single, "Ice Ice Baby", a rap song about his MC skills, the Miami scene, and a gun-fight on A1A/Beachfront Avenue. Van Winkle's manager and financier, Tommy Quon, chose a limited release for the single, and no vinyl release for the album, so that fans bought the more expensive CD instead. As a consequence, To The Extreme became the first #1 album in the US without a vinyl counterpart release. It went on to sell over 11 million copies. Singer Alanis Morissette appeared as Van Winkle's opening act, and she later went on to considerable mainstream success. In 1990, "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip-hop single to reach #1 on the music charts.^[3]

Van Winkle starred in the motion picture Cool as Ice (1991), often colloquially referred to on blogs and online reviews as "The Vanilla Ice Movie." The film was a very loose remake of Rebel Without a Cause updated for the 1990s, starring Van Winkle as "Johnny," a biker gang member modeled on the Vanilla Ice character. Johnny falls in love with a preppy girl he meets while riding through a small town. The soundtrack featured several new Vanilla Ice tracks, including a duet with Naomi Campbell.^[4] The film was both a commercial and critical failure. For his performance, Van Winkle won the "Worst New Star" award at the 1991 Golden Raspberry Awards. The film slipped into obscurity with only a limited VHS release. However, in the early 2000s, it enjoyed a new status as a so-bad-it's-good cult film. Cool As Ice is also the lead song from his second studio album, "Cool As Ice", the video of which featured super-model Naomi Cambell. He also performed a duet with Naomi on the same album. In the same year, Van Winkle made a somewhat more successful appearance (this time playing himself) in the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, where he performed a self-penned song named "Ninja Rap" at the film's climax. While heavily ridiculed, the "Ninja Rap" helped turn the film's soundtrack into a best-seller.

Revisiting his songs for a third time, Van Winkle's next album was a live version of To The Extreme titled Extremely Live. Though Extremely Live was certified gold (selling more than 500,000 copies), his fame had faded significantly by the time it was released in 1991, and sales of the album never approached those of its predecessor.

Van Winkle's success also brought problems. "Ice Ice Baby" sampled the 1981 Queen and David Bowie collaboration "Under Pressure" without permission, acknowledging credit or paying royalties. There was no public court case over the issue but the copyright holders of Under Pressure threatened suit and settled with Vanilla out of court for an undisclosed sum. Members of the national black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha accused Van Winkle of using the fraternity's chant "Ice ice baby, too cold, too cold," without credit or permission.^[5] Although initially writing in his original biography, "Ice Baby is a chant that's done by the Alpha fraternity. I flipped the Vanilla in front of it and thought, '"That's cool,'" Van Winkle later denied knowing of Alpha Phi Alpha.^[5] Van Winkle recorded a version of the funk-disco classic "Play That Funky Music", a major hit for Wild Cherry in 1976; however, Wild Cherry singer-guitarist Rob Parissi alleged that he was not credited as the writer of Van Winkle's version of the song.^[6] His flamboyant stage outfits and over-stylized grooming inspired an imitative fad, but eventually led to great ridicule.

However, the decisions of what to do next were badly bungled by his management team, and in a desire to get as rich as he could as quick as he could, Van Winkle went along with it. They released a biography of Van Winkle chronicling a false background story detailing his early life in the ghetto. Trying to give the suburb-raised Van Winkle "street credibility" that he didn't have. Van Winkle claimed that he had attended a predominantly black high school in Miami, Florida and had led a crime-riddled life, rather than growing up in a stable, upper-middle-class family.^[3] These facts first earned notoriety when student-reporters at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, a suburban and mostly white high school in Miami, attempted to locate Van Winkle in the local district records, in the process determining Vanilla Ice's real name and background. His deception was widely condemned, particularly in the hip hop community, and Van Winkle could not shake the perception that he embodied the white mainstream's commercial appropriation and dilution of traditionally Black music. The backlash all but turned Van Winkle into a pariah.

Van Winkle's popularity had vanished mostly due to poor marketing. Fans were fed up, not so much with the music, but with his image. He often used extremely corny dialogue, wore sequined jumpsuits, and constantly pandered to a very fickle pre-teen crowd who was mostly just interested in his first hit single.

Van Winkle has been mocked in other rappers' lyrics, most notably by the later (and massively more successful) white rap artist Eminem,^{[citation needed]} but perhaps the most famous contemporary critique was 3rd Bass' song "Pop Goes the Weasel".^[7] Its music video featured punk rock singer Henry Rollins, dressed like Van Winkle, being assaulted by the members of the group. The African-American sketch comedy In Living Color also mocked Vanilla Ice with a sketch where the rapper was portrayed (by Jim Carrey) as a bumbling phoney, the backup chorus singing "He's so white-white baby!".^[8] Both Chris Rock's character Nat X from Saturday Night Live and rapper Ice-T in an interview with Rolling Stone wondered if the rough-and-tumble "street" that Ice claimed to hail from was in fact Sesame Street.^[9][10]

Van Winkle also, around this time, appeared in Madonna's Sex book.

Van Winkle returned to music in 1994 with Mind Blowin'. His image had been changed to a dreadlocked, marijuana-obsessed, tattooed gangsta, insisting that his former sound and image had been pressed on him by his record company. Shifting public tastes in music and fashion, the perception that he had altered his image to suit current trends, as well as the fallout from negative press in the interim between albums, all contributed to the commercial failure of the album.

On July 4, 1994, Van Winkle attempted to commit suicide and made another attempt later that same year, citing drug abuse and anxiety surrounding his flagging career.

During this period, Van Winkle claimed in a television interview that he had been threatened and assaulted by Marion "Suge" Knight, founder and CEO of Death Row Records, for royalties demanded by a former associate who claimed that he had, in fact, written "Ice Ice Baby." According to Van Winkle, Knight dangled him by his ankles over a hotel balcony until he agreed to sign over the royalties from the track. Knight denied the allegation. Van Winkle later confirmed that the incident never took place.^[11] This alleged incident was parodied in the 2005 movie Be Cool, in which Vince Vaughn's character, Roger — a street-talking, white record producer loosely based on Vanilla Ice, was dangled from a building by Sin LaSalle's entourage (LaSalle himself, played by Cedric the Entertainer, is partially based on Suge Knight). Another parody appeared in a 2006 episode of Entourage where the character Johnny Drama is held in the same fashion.

It wasn't until 1996 that he made his next appearance (credited as "Rob Van Winkle)," on the song "Boom" by suburban Philadelphia comedy rock group The Bloodhound Gang. The track's deep bass groove and Van Winkle's uncharacteristic tough guy flow on the first verse led to a quasi-ironic revival in popularity, and the first new Vanilla Ice CD in four years.

In 1998, Hard to Swallow found Ice in a musically similar idiom to the track from the Bloodhound Gang, using a contemporarily popular alternative metal sound his press kit referred to as "skate rock" that could be described as musically similar to early Limp Bizkit or Korn. Van Winkle once again revised his image, and was now a tow-headed, pierced and tattooed headbanger. The disc also included a revamped version of "Ice Ice Baby," renamed "Too Cold," and reinterpreted as a stomping heavy metal anthem. (Also performing on the album were Doug Ardito of Puddle of Mudd, DJ Swamp of Beck, Shannon Larkin, Sonny Mayo, and Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit, among others.)

His career continued mainly with a number of minor television appearances. In 1999, Van Winkle appeared on an MTV special called MTV's 25 Lame in which MTV retired some of its worst videos. Van Winkle accepted an invitation to appear and destroy the tape of "Ice Ice Baby" live on air. After chatting with the hosts (Janeane Garofalo, Chris Kattan, Denis Leary, and Jon Stewart), he took the bat and destroyed the tape as well as the set. The show quickly transitioned to a commercial. During the mayhem, Van Winkle managed to cut Kattan's foot.^{[citation needed]}

In 2000, he co-hosted the car tuning program Ice with Jordan on the UK Men & Motors channel, alongside glamour model Jordan; the title was also a pun on ICE (in-car entertainment).

In 2001, Van Winkle released Bi-Polar, which contained new metal material and more contemporary hip-hop songs. It did little to rekindle public interest. On the album Van Winkle collaborated with many artists such as Wu-Tang Clan affiliate La The Darkman, Chuck D from Public Enemy, and the Insane Clown Posse (which earned Van Winkle a following amongst the "Juggalos", the famously devoted fans of Insane Clown Posse). Chuck D gives him credit to this day. ^[12] Van Winkle also briefly appeared in the JCW, the Insane Clown Posse's wrestling federation, to replace an injured Shaggy 2 Dope.

Vanilla Ice appearing at the Tex-Mex Grill in Baltimore, Maryland. He is pouring Jägermeister into a fellow reveller's mouth while singing his hit song, Ice Ice Baby.

In 2002, Van Winkle was a participant in the reality show Celebrity Boxing. Actor Todd Bridges defeated Van Winkle by knocking him down several times during the event. Moreover, in 2004, Van Winkle starred in the second season of The Surreal Life on VH1. On the show, despite his vow to not sing his early hits, Van Winkle eventually agreed to sing a karaoke version of "Ice Ice Baby" at a bar with Trishelle Cannatella and Traci Bingham. In the same year, he appeared on British television in the first season of the reality TV show The Farm on Five in which he came in second place. He was also cast in the film The Helix...Loaded, a parody of The Matrix.

In June 2005, Van Winkle won the second round of NBC's Hit Me Baby One More Time, performing "Ice Ice Baby" and covering Destiny's Child's hit "Survivor". He also appeared on a VH1 special entitled "Remaking Vanilla Ice", which featured the revamped Van Winkle preparing for the release of his new album Platinum Underground. Ice also appeared on the series Damage Control on MTV2 to promote the album.

Van Winkle released Platinum Underground in August 2005 containing some new material, songs from Bi-polar, and some remakes of his older works; the album received mixed reviews and limited sales. Along with the album's release, Van Winkle performed with Insane Clown Posse at Hallowicked 2005. He also held a series of European concerts in November and December of the same year.

Controversy broke out on the G4 Forums website on September 19, 2005 when, in the heat of the co-hosting auditions, Attack of the Show! claimed on their website that they had discovered a new, permanent cohost who wasn't going to be required to audition.^{[citation needed]} They claimed that "You’ve seen him in music videos, in his own film, and on reality TV. He’s ice cold, goes to the extreme, and really knows how to play that funky music. And we’ve got him signed exclusively to AOTS." ("Ice Cold" and "Play That Funky Music" were both tracks on Vanilla Ice's 1990 album To the Extreme). Adding to the prank, Ice personally appeared on the show on September 20, 2005 as the "new permanent co-host." After co-hosting a brief segment, Ice publicized his new album and left. Kevin Pereira put an end to the prank with the announcement, "Unfortunately, Vanilla Ice is not our new co-host."

Van Winkle also starred in The Surreal Life: Fame Games, which began airing in 2007 on VH1. This show pitted stars from various seasons of The Surreal Life against each other in competitions. Ice won many individual competitions, as well as winning several competitions for his team. At a concert at Virginia Tech, Ice claimed he beats up Ron Jeremy on the show, but "still has love for him." On February 2, 2007, the two appeared on The Tyra Banks Show and claimed they were once again friends.^[13]

Van Winkle is a contestant on Ty Murray’s Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge on CMT.

He made a brief guest appearance at London Nightclub Tiger Tiger in October 2007.^{[citation needed]}

Van Winkle was arrested by police in Davie, Florida in January 2001 for assaulting his wife. According to the criminal complaint, they got into an argument as they drove on Interstate 595, with Ice allegedly pulling the hair from his wife's head. He pleaded guilty to charges of disorderly conduct in April 2001 and was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend family therapy sessions.^[14][15]

He briefly attracted the attention of the media when his pet wallaroo, Bucky, and pet goat, Pancho, escaped from his Port St. Lucie, Florida home in November 2004. After wandering around local streets for over a week, the animals were caught, and returned to Ice. He had to pay a $220 fine for expired pet tags, and an undisclosed fine for the escape of the animals.^[16]

He currently lives in Wellington, Florida with his wife, Laura, and their two daughters, Dusti Raine and Keelee Breeze.

• Back 2 Back Hits (April 10, 1998)
• The Best of Vanilla Ice (Platinum Disc) (February 23, 1999)
• The Best of Vanilla Ice (EMI) (March 13, 2001)
• The Best of Vanilla Ice (Collectables) (August 22, 2006)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Vanilla Ice

• Official Site
• Vanilla Ice at MySpace
• Vanillarama: The Original Vanilla Ice Fan Site
• Interview, Summer 2004