60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Ice Ice Baby”—Vanilla Ice

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Rob dives into his top five all-time favorite '90s white rapper songs when looking back at the rise and fall of Vanilla Ice with his 1990 hit “Ice Ice Baby.” Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Tom Breihan Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Look out. Top five white rapper songs of the 1990s. go. Number five. Tide of the poison blue running up on your crew. You know what to do. Tell them, fuck you.

It's a proposition. Fuck you. Fuck you. It's a proposition. Hear me now and believe me later. You're listening to Tommy Lee. Motley crew drummer and accidental porn star. Tommy Lee, as heard on a

self-titled 1999 debut album from Tommy's mildly accursed rap rock side project, methods of mayhem And as you may have suspected, this song is called Proposition Fuck You Pretty sure that one's gonna pass. Number four

I'll get that. Number four is also Proposition Fuck You by Tommy Lee's Really substantially accursed Rap Rock Side Project Methods of Mayhem The Fall in 1999, right? I'm a senior in college. I'm huddling in my dorm room. I was still living in a dorm as a senior. I don't know why.

And I'm writing freelance record reviews for alternative press magazine. And some of these records I get to pick, and some of them I don't. And the latter is most assuredly the case when I receive $50 for composing a 100-word review of the Methods of Mayhem record. That's 50 cents a word. Not bad. Number three. Number three is Proposition.

you again. Just to explain, Tommy Lee is joined on this track by the Venice, California, Latino rap group, Filthy Immigrants. Filthy is styled in all caps with periods between each letter and two E's on the end. And Dutch is a member of filthy immigrants, a group that had a MySpace page at some point. So the line, methods of mayhem, filthy and Dutch, Tommy Lee is not saying that he personally is filthy, as in really dirty. And Dutch, as in Hayesman. from the Netherlands. I misheard that line at first. I think I got $25 for writing this 100-word record review actually shit. But I say to you now in earnest that the priceless spiritual nourishment I have received from Proposition, Fuck You will last me a lifetime. I think of this song now,

let's say twice a week here in the year of Our Lord 2022. I think of it fondly. I love this song unreservedly. I am delighted by this song eternally. I'm serious. I just walk around sometimes going, fuck you, fuck you, it's a proposition. This is obnoxious though, making this song all five of the top five white rapper songs of the 90s. That's ridiculous. I do apologize. Let's move on. Number two. Yeah, so number two is another song in the Methods of Mayhem record.

I just realized that Tommy Lee's last line there is The Woody has Rizzy Risen. I wouldn't say that was a welcome realization. Usually I black out right after Tommy Raps shooting my jizzy jism. A small blessing. This is hopefully the single most obnoxious thing I've ever done in my life

saying these words out loud to you right now. I'm very sorry about this, but if I printed out these lyrics and handed them to you and told you It was a new song by that band, the 1975. I suspect you would believe me. But no, this is a Methods Am song called Get Naked. It features Mixmaster Mike, Will Kim, George Clinton, and Fred Durst.

Just an astonishing collection of people. Throw in Tommy Lee and you're teetering on the knife edge between dream blunt rotation and nightmare blunt rotation. And as you may have suspected, on getting. naked, Tommy Lee addresses, quite explicitly, the illegal and very much unwelcome, and unfortunately quite lucrative release in 1995 of the honeymoon sex tape he'd made with his wife, Pamela Lee. Usually I black out right after Tommy Lee wraps rocking my porno tape for hours and hours, but I just realized what that last line is, and that was a profoundly unwelcome realization. And my gift to you is I'm not telling you what that last line is.

Don't rewind it. The 2022 Hulu fictional miniseries, Pam and Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan as Pam and Tommy, respectively. That show is somehow both more and way less respectful of the emotional implications of the Pam and Tommy sex tape. The show is a feminist,

apologetic pro-Pamela Lee reclamation of that whole fiasco, but also there's a scene the pilot where Tommy Lee talks to his penis about how hot Pamela Lee is. Like Tommy Lee's penis has dialogue. Tommy Lee's penis is voiced by Jason Manzukas. It's a golden age for television. Later in the show, I forget if I've mentioned this here already, but there's a scene in Pam and Tommy where the fictional Motley crew confront the fictional third-eye blind in a recording studio

to illustrate how Motley crew have fallen out of favor. commercially by the middle late 90s, and fake Motley crew and fake third-eye blind. Do not fight physically fight in the show. I'm still mad about this. Tremendous wasted opportunity. I wanted a full anchorman style slapstick ultra-violent brawl. I wanted third-eye-bly frontman Stephen Jenkins to like wheeled Excalibur and try to cut Nicky Six in half.

The Methods of Mayhem record also features cameos from Snoop Dog, Kid Rock, a guy from the Crystal Method. Electronico is still the next big thing in 1999, and a member of the Wu-Tang clan. You got, but still, but this song, Get Naked, is this record's most effective deployment of star power. Chorus! That's the chorus, so I'm sitting in my dorm room. as a senior in college is a baffling decision by me in retrospect, and I'm perusing the press materials for the Methods of Mayhem record so that I can write a more informed 100-word review for $25,

because I am a professional, and I glean from these press materials that there is a music video for the song, Get Naked. Get Naked is the single, and in the music video for Get Naked, when Lil Kim delivers that line in the chorus. Lil Kim in the video is apparently riding a giant chicken. I'm sorry for this, but just to clarify, Lil Kim is filmed, is depicted astride a giant chicken

as she delivers the line, ride the Kati at the spot. She's riding a rooster, I suppose, but chicken is funnier, and I read this, right? I absorb this information. And I think, hmm, do I want to seek out the Get Naked video for personal and professional reasons? Or should I deliberately not watch the video and just imagine what Lil Kim straddling a giant chicken might look like? Hmm, what should I do?

Yeah, I just watched this video for the first time. It's like a mechanical bowl, but it's a chicken. I'm really disappointed. That was best left in my imagination. All right, here it is. the electrifying conclusion of the top five white rapper songs of the 1990s. Number one. I feel thee.

Tommy Lee stepping casually. Middle finger in the air for everybody to see. Obviously, you haven't read over my proposition. Fuck you. Collectively running the opposition. It's an extremely catchy song. Tommy Lee is a very poor rapper, but we can agree that proposition fuck you, which is indeed the best white rapper song of the 1990s is an insidiously catchy song.

I am absolutely serious about this. The next time a minivan cuts me off during morning school drop off, I'm going to scandalize my kids by going, fuck you, fuck you, it's a proposition. The Methods of Mayhem record was the ultimat of the 1990s. What a way to go out. The Methods of Mayhem record is like if the Bible had ended with the book of Job. The Methods of Mayhem record, it's as though the theoretical combination of rap and rock was the titan. Tannock and it struck the iceberg of Tommy Lee's penis.

The Methods of Mayhem Record did to New Metal with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 did to Chicago. The Methods of Mayhem record was four stars. I liked it. I'm sorry. Delightfully tacky yet unrefined. You get what you pay for. An alternative press magazine paid $25 to some knucklehead. college senior, still living in a dorm room who gave the Methods of Mayhem record four stars.

Four out of five stars. It wasn't stars. Alternative press at a weird rating system. It was like four out of five middle fingers or something. The methods of mayhem record came out in December 1999. One last grave insult to the 20th century, just in time for New Year's Eve, heading into the year 2000. Should all acquaintance be forgot? Fuck you, fuck you. It's a proposition and as for the decade, the 1990s ended as they began with a filthy white guy, ruining rap music for everybody. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. call me vanilla ishmael all right stop collaborate and listen

Lolita light of my life fire of my loins ships at a distance have every man's wish on board the sun shone having no alternative on the nothing new

all right stop collaborate and listen All this happened, more or less. Why is all right, stop, collaborate, and listen the single greatest opening line to any work of art produced in the 20th century? We try to avoid hyperbole around here, but we fail to avoid hyperbole when confronted with the confounding majesty of all right, stop, collaborate, and listen. He says, all right, stop, and you stop. He says, collaborate. And you go, what?

He says, and listen and you listen. A screaming comes across the sky. And that screaming takes the form of a young man from Dallas or Miami by the name of Robert Van Winkle. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 82nd episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we are discussing Ice, Ice, Baby by Vanilla Ice Ice. From his 1990 blockbuster album to the extreme, to the extreme of what, exactly, to the extreme of the visible color spectrum? All right, stop.

Collaborate and listen. Ice is back with my brand new invention. Something grabs a hold of me tightly. Flow like a hawkoon daily and nightly. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know. It stopped. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably.

want to know is where Robert Van Winkle was born and what his lousy childhood was like. Now his parents were occupied and all before they had him and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. But I don't feel like going into it if you want to know the truth. One of my favorite stories The Ringers ever published is called the mostly true story of Vanilla Ice, Hip Hop, and the American Dream, written in 2020 by the great L.A. rap journalist Jeff Weiss. Stories like, what, 400,000 words long, it's fantastic. Jeff talks to Vanilla Ice. Vanilla Ice says shit like, I lived in Miami and wrote Ice Ice Baby about it.

I didn't think about where I was from at the time. That only became a thing after I was famous. I was like, where I'm from, who fucking cares where I'm from. I was embarrassed to tell people. I was from Farmers Branch. That's a suburb of Dallas. I didn't tell them I was from Miami. I didn't tell them I was from anywhere.

I was just like, listen, I'm from around the corner, man. I'm from around the fucking way. I actually tried to detour people. End quote, this is a fantastic story. The story will make you love Vanilla Ice again and maybe make you feel a little bad for him for the first time. But my favorite part actually is Jeff talking about how Ice Ice Baby is maybe the platonic ideal of your first rap song. Or at least the ideal first rap song you ever loved. It's a better song, the less hip-hop you're familiar with.

It's a better song, the less context you have in general. It's a better song the younger you are, the more naive you are. It's the best rap song imaginable if you are, but an adorable newborn full. Your shaky legs tottering adorably on the Disney-fied ice of late childhood or early pre-adolescence. Ice Ice Ice Baby is. a better song, for example, if you've never heard this song in your life. It's not the same. Ding, ding, ding, ding, dinga, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. That's the way theirs goes. Our's goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. There's meaning the

the 1981 song, Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie. Ours meaning vanilla ices. That little bitty change. It's not the same. Remember when Vanilla Ice said that verbatim? on MTV. I practice saying that just like he said it. It's better if you don't know that Ice Ice Baby samples the fucking bejesus out of under pressure. It's better if you don't know that vanilla ice once attempted to deny that and eventually got sued by Queen. It's better if you don't know shit about shit. It's better if you don't know how to tie your shoes. It's better if you're so small that you're not physically tall enough to look down on anything yet. Ice Ice Ice Baby doesn't sample that part, but obviously that's my favorite part of under pressure.

I just wanted to hear that part. Why can't we give Ice Ice Baby that one more chance? Here's how Jeff Weiss puts it in his rad ringer opus. Quote, there is a tendency to disregard music loved in childhood as profoundly uncool. At least prior to TikTok, we're now even nominally cool. things exist in an amniotic state of theatrical sadness. But the ideal judge of Assange's quality is actually that blank slate condition. There are no expectations, biases, or anything deeper than the dim awareness of, I like this. I'd never heard of Queen or David Bowie. Had someone patiently explained that, well, actually, the under-pressure loop is rather obvious,

and ice's flow is rudimentary and stilted compared to stylistically inventive emcees like Big Daddy Kame, Rakim, or Koojee rap, my eyes would have glazed over. How are you supposed to lip sync to them? End quote. Our friend Tom Bryan, Stereo Gum writer and editor Tom Brian, we'll be talking to him in a bit. He's got a new book called The Number One's 20 chart topping hits that reveal the history of pop music. It's great. He's got a whole chapter on Ice Ice Ice Base. And Tom says, as a technical rapper, Vanilla is graceless and ungainly, but there's no denying his confidence. He believes that he's cool, even if he can't justify it. And he says, to the elementary school kids of 1990, the simplicity of Ice Ice Baby was a selling point.

This was a rap song. You could very easily memorize and then repeat to your friends. End quote. Tom and Jeff, I trust both those. guys. So let's get naive. Let's be adorable baby foals again. Let's forget how to tie our shoes. Regress with me, won't you? It's 1990. You're 11, 12 years old. Fine. I'm 11, 12 years old. I'm in junior high. I'm sitting in English class or whatever. I'm sitting a couple seats behind one of the hottest girls in school. A cheerleader, et cetera, cool earrings. And she's talking about her boyfriend,

one of the coolest most popular dudes in school. And she says, I would never break up with him. I would never cheat on him unless it was with vanilla ice. And I'm sitting back there, not very cool, not very popular, not very hot. And I'm thinking, I don't think I'm going to enjoy junior high. And I didn't. But I, too, enjoyed vanilla ice very much. Her eyes

Flames with passion Like she was possessed As I shivered and quivered Why she rubbed on my test Slaves in and great I couldn't scream Moaning and groaning like she could take on the age In 1990 I owned six cassette tapes You ready for this shit

Six tapes Hysteria by Def Leopard New Jersey by Bon Jovi Gonna make you sweat by C&C Music Factory Pump up the jam by Technotronic. Ooh, they're from Europe. Please Hammer don't hurt him

by MC Hammer. And to the extreme by Vanilla Ice. I loved Vanilla Ice. I loved the Vanilla Ice song, Stop That Train. An excellent addition to one of my favorite pop song genres. The I Had Sexed with a Sexy Lady who intimidated me genre,

joining such classics as Prince's Little Red Corvette and Ice teased, The Girl tried to kill me. Outside of a vague awareness of Prince, I don't know any of that shit at the time. course, I certainly didn't know the Keith and Tex version of the Spanish Tonians oft-covered 1965 Scott Classic Stop That Train either. No, at the time, I just knew that I liked the part of Vanilla Ices stop that train where the turntable goes,

I loved that part. I loved the Vanilla Ice song, Hooked. I didn't know shit about Public Enemy. I didn't know shit about Houdini. I just knew that I loved the part of Hooked, where the Weird laughing guy goes, hoo ha ha, and then Vanilla Ice just goes, yeah. I loved that part. Let's leave it at that.

Vanilla Ice's best line on Hooked is when he goes, yeah. I love the part of the song, ICE is working it, where the lady yells, ooh, vanilla ice. Blow off the lid for the kid,

I get nice. That's why the lady screams. I love that part. I love the song, Life is a fantasy. That's parentheses. Life is a closed parentheses, fantasy.

That's a super weird. use of parentheses. But I love this song even if I was careful not to play this song around my mom. In my dreams, I vision myself at the ocean. Beautiful girls rubbing me down with a lotion. Even though you know I flow as cold as an ice cube, let me tell you how it is to make love on an in a tooth. What's the most dignified way that I can put this? Hmm. All right, how about as a 12-year-old? I was bliss. unawares of the logistical challenges and inner tube would pose when you know what, never mind.

Forget it. Forget it. I love the second half of To the Extreme side B of my To the Extreme cassette, even though shit starts to get super dicey. I loved the Vanilla Ice song Rasta Man. This is not a safer topic for me than the inner tube topic. This is not one of my more defensible 12-year-old opinions, but I will say that I hope this guy was well compensated.

You know that old Saturday Night Live sketch? The Lonely Island song Ross Trent, where Andy Sandberg is dreadlocks and won't stop talking about Babylon. Ross Trent comes up a lot, I've noticed, whenever the vanilla ice song, Rasta Man, comes up. I can't imagine why. He and I, myself and you,

the Rasta miniche, and the show, rest of my group. Reggae music's been around for a while. Vanilla Ice is doing it. Don't hip-hop style. Shout out DJ DeShay, Vanilla Ice's DJ, who'd maybe rather not have received a shout out during Rostoman.

This whole sequence is pretty rude and is probably going to get ruder. So I feel the need to further implicate my 12-year-old self here, which is why I'll tell you that this was my favorite part of Roste Man when I was 12. Yes. I love the part of Rasta Man, where Vanilla Ice goes, the girls with a big, big, ah, oh man, that's rad. What a rad dude. So subversive. You see how much fun you can have when you're a blank slate, when you don't know shit about shit?

Do you have any idea how much better the Vanilla Ice song I Love You sounds when you don't know shit about LL Cool J? Girl, are you still mad about? about the inner tube, girl. It sounded good in theory, baby. Okay, so there. Apparently, I decided this was necessary. There's a pretty comprehensive overview of the 13 tracks on the Vanilla Ice album to the extreme that are not the two by far most famous tracks.

We didn't get all of them, but we hit the highlights, I think. Right? I'm not forgetting anything. Am I? Oh, yes, I am. What it's like. Having a room. How can we forget what it's like

Poh-N-A-Boh-Hav-N-A-Roney How can we forget the immortal beatboxing classic Haven-A-Roney? My favorite part of having-A-Roney is when he goes Eat-Bin-Bad-Biden-Bad-Bad-Bad-Bad-debid-Bin-Bad-d-d-d-d. Eib-Mab-been da-bomb-be-dib-bib-dib-dib-dib-dib-dib-dib. Skuliam-Bid-Bid-Bid-Doo. Now we've hit all the highlights.

highlights of the 13 way less famous tracks onto the extreme. Okay. Historically, instinctively, barring some sort of dire moral dimension, I try on this show not to be like, yo, this shit sucks, right? It's rude. It's rude. It's unhelpful. It's elitist.

I am weaponizing my own hindsight and a transparent attempt to sound smarter and cooler and hotter than I am. You like what you like. 12-year-old me, for all his naive, doofiness, he liked what he liked. But as we turn our attention now to the two way more famous songs on Vanilla Ice's to the extreme, revisiting it now, I have to live my truth and tell you that play that funky music by Vanilla Ice is trash and a half. There are two major problems here. to my mind, and supercalifragilistic exe alidotius is for sure the first problem.

The flag girl is on her own. She can make her own decisions. The second major problem is the word German. Okay, there are three major problems. The Nazi is the second one, but spare a thought for the desperate, oh shit, I need two more syllables grasp for German. When he says, I like my rhymes, atrocious, believe him. I do not care for this song. which is like that blue leg Calvin and Hobbs truck decal where it's Calvin pissing on something.

But here it's vanilla ice pissing on proud Ohio funk band Wild Cherries, 1975 classic, play that funky music. And I'm being unnecessarily rude here because I've just identified a fourth major problem, which is the phrase VIP posse. VIP stands for vanilla ice posse. So when he says VIP posse, he's saying vanilla ice posse posse. The second posse is redundant. I was in a real bad mood when I revisited this song.

Man, I had a proposition fuck you type vibe. This has all gotten excessively rude. Let's let the VIP do some call and response while I regroup. Somebody is going to town on the vibra slap on that song. I'll say that. I dig the enthusiasm. Play that funky music was supposed to be Vanilla Ice's breakout single, dude. This was a song that was going to make Vanilla Ice famous.

And needless to say, vanilla ice did not get famous until a couple DJs flipped over that play that funky music 12-inch single and discovered on the B side the song that would actually make Vanilla Ice famous. And here, regrettably, it's time to set aside our clueless childish ways and stop being blank slates who don't know shit about shit and address, however briefly, the Vanilla Ice Creation Myths. all that David Copperfield kind of crap. I will try and probably fail to be brief. Robert Van Winkle. That's a tough break, namewise, for an aspiring superstar rapper, was born on Halloween, 1967. If you believe his 1991 quickie semi-autobiography,

Ice by Ice, he was born in the suburbs of Miami, but he was probably born in the suburbs of Dallas. And yeah, immediately I'm irritated by the vagueness of this origin story. Price by ice, by the way, is super out of print, but it's available right now via Amazon as a used paperback in good condition for the low, low price of $298.94. Should I have bought that? Should I have tried to expense that? I'm still thinking about expensing that. In the late 80s, if you were an aspiring superstar rapper, it was way cooler to be from Miami than from Dallas. That's my overbroad explanation for this confusion. superstar rappers in 1990 and the popular imagination were from New York, L.A. or Miami, maybe. That's overbroad, but I'm trying to be brief. Young Robert grows up between Dallas and Miami, mostly Dallas. Young Robert watches the 1984 breakdancing film, Breaking. You seen this movie?

Breaking? It's streaming right now on Hulu. I'm just kidding. It's not streaming anywhere. If you want to get any more in 1984 than this, you're going to need a fucking Dolorian. A movie that's fresh and hot with high energy. Dancing to the beat with a scratch-mixed sound comes from the street. That's 1984 for you. It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13. Young Robert likes this movie a whole lot. Young Robert starts breakdancing in Dallas area malls for loose change.

Young Robert starts rapping also. Young Robert boldly ventures into the mythical Dallas nightclub and hip-hop mecca City Lights, where he is often the only white person, maybe. He breakdances quite well. He battle raps less well, but boy, is he charming. City Lights takes him in as a star attraction. He opens shows for two live crew, Rob Bass, M.C. Hammer, and that big public enemy Ice Tea tour.

He hooks up with a local DJ and producer in City Lights Luminary named Earthquake. Earthquake works up some beats. Two of those beats are Play That Funky Music and Ice Ice Baby. Earthquake gives young Robert cassette tapes of those beats, or young Robert kind of just takes them. We're getting vague again. Millions of dollars are at stake. Shug Night, peripherally, but quite vividly, will be getting involved eventually in this creation myth. I'll put it to you like this.

Vanilla told Jeff Weiss in that ringer piece that he wrote the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby in 1988. He was 20 years old and living with his mom. in Dallas, and he'd just gotten back from a weekend trip to Miami, and he got inspired, and he wrote all the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby in a half hour, between 1230 and 1am.

The specificity of that, the timestamp, Vanilla Ice, helpfully provides. I'm going to let you decide whether that makes his overall account of his own origin myth more or less believable. Does that level of detail indicate that he's not bullshitting?

or that he's like extra bullshitting. Much to consider. The Vanilla Ice songs Ice Ice Baby and Play That Funky Music now exist. Also, Young Robert is now known professionally as Vanilla Ice. Ichibon Records, a respected underground rap label in Atlanta, agrees to release Vanilla Ice's 1989 debut album, which is called Hooked and is for sale on discogs right now in Mint Condition for $500.

plus five bucks shipping $505 for an unopened mint condition CD. Should I have expensed that? Should I log in and concur right now and whip up the most legendary expense report in journalism history? Punk your hook on that SSSY. I don't know why. I don't stand by and just let a girl run over me. I'm a man. Can't you see boy?

There's a couple dudes in the YouTube comment section for the song Hooked, trying to figure out with the line, you're hooked on that SSSY is all about. And one theory is that he's trying to spell P-U-S-S-Y, but he ran out of syllables. Boy, is he charming. Hooked is not a hit on the radio. Play that funky music,

and affront to God and man is not a hit on the radio. You know what is, though? Dance. that booms. I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom deadly. When I play a dope melody, anything less than the best is a felony. Yeah, a couple intrepid DJs flip over the play that funky music 12 inch and play Ice Ice Baby instead. Good idea. This is a great song. In light of all the rudeness, let me make sure I say that. There is, forgive me, an iciness, an eerieness, an entrancing

minimalism to Ice Ice Baby. The underpressure sample is fantastic. even if vanilla ice insists it's not the same this song has as we have determined the single greatest opening line any work of art produced in the 20th century it makes you stop it makes you collaborate it makes you listen it's a great origin story song it's a great rap song it's a great pop song anything less than the best is a felony ice ice ice baby blows up the ice ice baby video eventually blows up to on m tv filmed in Dallas, but most people just assumed he filmed it in Miami because he's wearing a Miami Hurricanes sweatshirt at one point. Lots of big shot labels. Consider signing vanilla ice, but don't.

A few labels try very hard to sign vanilla ice, but don't, including Def Jam, Deified New York City rap label, Beastie Boys, L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy, B, B, Blah, Earthquake, the DJ, quote public enemy leader Chuck D as saying, I can make a lot of money off that white. boy. End quote. Vanilla Ice almost signs with Def Jam, and he gets a shitload of money to sign with SBK records instead. Major label, Wilson Phillips, Technotronic, blah, blah, blah, very little hip-hop experience and way less deified label, but way more money. SBK takes the hooked album, adds a few tracks, and releases it in September 1990 as To the Extreme. By November, To the Extreme is the number one album in America and Ice Ice Baby

is the number one song in America. There's your origin myth. Can we talk about the VIP posse for a second though? The VIP. VIP posse is redundant. He's got me doing it now too. I want to talk about the Vanilla Ice Posse. The dude's

going dance and deadly in the background there. Recently I just sat down and listened to Ice Ice Baby and wrote down every time the VIP double one of Vanilla Ice's lines. And I'd like to recreate this experience for you now. You ever listen to isolated vocal tracks?

They take Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones and isolate Mary Clayton's incredible background vocals. This is like that, except it's Ice Ice Baby instead of Gimme Shelter and Vanilla Ice instead of the Rolling Stones, and we're isolating the vanilla ice posse instead of Mary Clayton. And also, I'm doing it. Other than that, it's the same. Let's see how long I can do this before I get embarrassed. Here now is Ice Ice Baby, but only the very very very.

VIP parts. Here we go. Listen. Invention. Will it ever stop? Dance. Deadly. Wait.

Play. This is fucking stupid. Jumping. Pumping. Faking. Bacon. You think these guys got health insurance? Rolling. Did you?

you stop? Beachfront Avenue. Okay, I'm embarrassed. Here, by pretty much universal consensus is the most embarrassing part of this song for vanilla ice and for like society. Second verse, he's driving in Miami. He's got girlies on standby waiting just to say hi. He's got guns in the car. Shea with a gauge and vanilla with a nine. Here's gunfire in the distance. The crowd scatters and vanilla ice scatters two. Police on the sea. You know what I mean? They pass me up. Can run it all Police on the scene, you know what I mean? They pass me up and yeah, vanilla ice.

I know what you mean. Ice Ice Baby is a rap song in part about white privilege. Ice Ice Ice Baby is also the first rap song in history to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which is not what you want in terms of society. But you can't rightly blame Vanilla Ice for what the cops do or what the charts do. Or maybe you can blame him. The story's not over, but the song's over. Yo, man, let's get out of here.

Word to your mother. Ice, ice, baby. Did you know that word to your mother is basically short for word to the motherland, as in Africa? Vanilla Ice once said, I can't say word to the mother because I'm not black, but I can say word to your mother. End quote. You know where I read that? You know the source, the Deified Rap magazine, the source. Force. Vanilla Ice said that in a late 1990 or early 1991 article in the source with the headline,

Vanilla Ice, Our Worst Nightmare. Vanilla Ice, colon, Our Worst Nightmare, Question Mark. The question mark is a polite hedge, I suppose. This article is written by hip-hop journalist and author Dan Charnas. He wrote that great rap industry book, The Big Payback. Just this year, he published Dilla Time about Jay Dilla, the Deified producer. Dan Charnas takes, and has always taken this shit seriously. And here's Dan. In the pages of Hip Hop Bible, The Source, talking to Vanilla Ice on the phone.

Vanilla Ice at this point is a full-blown pop star with a number one song and a number one album, and he's in the midst of a stadium tour with MC Hammer. And he's on the phone with a guy who thinks he's hip-hop's worst nightmare. Dan is asking Vanilla Ice if he's the White MC Hammer or the Elvis of Rap. Vanilla Ice doesn't want to be called either.

Dan is asking Vanilla Ice if he thinks it's helped him that he's white. Vanilla says that he wish it didn't, but, quote, I think my being white helps me on the pop side. And Dan asks him, in essence, what do you say to people who think you're a whack MC? And Vanilla Ice responds, quote, put me to the test. I'll battle anyone anytime. My manager tells me, yo, you don't have to do that now.

You're a star, but I'm a battle axe. I'm from the streets. End quote. I've heard that before. I've heard Vanilla Ice say that before. Where have I heard that before? I'm from the streets, man. If it were for rap, I'd probably be in jail or dead.

Word to your mother. Oh, right. I heard Vanilla Ice say that before when Kevin Bacon impersonated Vanilla Ice on Saturday Night Live in February 1991. So you're saying you're from the street. Word to your mother. What street?

Set to the street? I'm guessing you can tell, but that's Chris Rock in his S&L years as the militant talk show host, NatX, the dark side with NatX. So in November 1990, the Dallas Morning News publishes a mildly devastating investigative report on Vanilla Ice,

revealing that, A, his birth name is Robert Van Winkle, Tough break. B, he is not from the streets, or from Miami for that matter. But in fact, he went to high school in a fancy Dallas suburb. C, he claims to have won several national motocross championships, but apparently did not. And D, seriously, Robert Van Winkle. This is fairly benign rapper misinformation with the benefit of hindsight. This is not exactly Rick Ross caliber subterfuge.

But in November 1990, the Millie Vanilli scandal. is still reverberating through the music industry. Millie Vanillae, the Blockbuster, Grammy-winning pop group who turned out to be lip-sinkers, who didn't actually sing any of their songs ever, even on the records. Now, when Vanilla Ice is rapping, that's really Vanilla Ice. Give him that. But any pop star authenticity scare in this era, fairly or not, takes on a Millie-Vinilly sheen.

We're all taking this frivolous shit extra serious. There was a collective sense all of a sudden. It seemed a 12-year-old super-perceptive me that maybe we weren't supposed to like this person anymore. Which may explain why it's weird to me how vivid my memory of this 30-year-old SNL skit is. I can remember Kevin Bacon as Vanilla Ice's dance moves. I can remember when Chris Rock as an ad-X says, Sit your white ass down. I was delighted by that at junior high.

I probably said, sit your white ass down to a fellow white kid. in junior high. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't remember all of it. I didn't remember that this was Nat X's intro. Now, a lot of people call my next guest that Elvis a rap because they like the way he looks and dances. I call Vanilla Ice Elvis because I wish you were dead. Please welcome to Vanilla Ice.

That's rude. That's quite rude. But this whole skid is, unfortunately, for Vanilla Ice, definitely not the rudest TV parody of Vanilla Ice. I'm guessing you, this is coming, but here comes Jim Carrey. I'm white and I'm capitalizing on a trend that's currently rising. Mix it with Curley and Larry and Mo.

It's Jim Carrey, so you figured he would drag the three stooges into it. Here we got Jim Carrey on the beloved Fox sketch comedy series in Living Color, roasting the fucking bejesus out of vanilla ice. Jeff Weiss in the ringer calls this skit a massacre. Jeff says that in essence this is a disc track as devastating as hit him up or the bridge is over or ether. As sketch comedy parodies go, this is about as close to a career ender as you can get. Maybe never. I become richer with every endeavor. I'm living large and my bank is stupid because I just listen to real rap and stupid.

It's not what you want. You can argue that Vanilla. brought this on himself. This is February 1991, same month as Kevin Bacon on SNL. You can argue that Vanilla Ice brought this on himself a couple weeks earlier at the American Music Awards

when he won Best New Pop Slash Rock Artist and ended his acceptance speech with an ill-advised message for the haters. Word to your mother and the people would try to hold me down and talk bad about me. Kiss my white butt.

Word to your mother. I do how he brackets every statement with word to your mothers. It's like he's speaking in HTML, word to your mother. I'll take a ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, and rye toast, backslash, word to your mother. Ill-advised this statement by Vanilla Ice. Speaking of ill-advised, let me seize this opportunity to further disparage the American Music Awards. Worst Award show ever conceived by man or beast. The play that funky music, by Vanilla Ice of award shows. We already have an award show at home,

award show. The 1991 American Music Awards were the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 of 1991. Terrible. Vanilla Ice should not have said that. Two weeks later, he's getting his white butt roasted by Jim Carrey on In Living Color. And two days after that, Vanilla Ice gets his white butt roasted in person by our And here is where I would play you a clip of vanilla ice on Arsenio Hall, but I can't watch that shit.

I am conflict-averse, but I am especially averse to talk show conflict. Is there a viral clip where Dakota Johnson and Ellen DeGeneres are arguing on Ellen show about whether Dakota invited Ellen to her birthday party or something? I can't watch that shit. I get lethally uncomfortable. There's a very specific, combative, and yet artificial quality to sincere big, mad talk show arguments. They are my kryptonite. I can't do it. I can't.

Vanilla Ice and Arsenio Hall is a famous and culturally important combative talk show moment. It's cathartic. It's arguably even necessary. Arsenio Hall is displeased by Vanilla Ice. Arsenio Hall, by default, hip-hop's official ambassador in the realm of late-night talk shows. the ordinarily quite affable Arsenio Hall excoriates Vanilla Ice at great length to his face over, shall we say, cultural appropriation issues. Vanilla Ice attempts to defend himself. He's like, but Flav of Flav is my friend.

And Arsenio says, oh, you have a black friend? I'm paraphrasing. I can't do it. I'm sorry. I can't play you a clip because I physically cannot watch it. The worm has turned, friends. Jim Carrey during his vanilla ice routine on In Living Color. He does the worm. It's awesome.

Even fellow white rappers are viciously clowning vanilla ice at this point. You know, third base, the New York City rap trio at DJ Richie Rich and two white rappers, MC Search and Pete Nice. Third base of The Gas Face fame. Third base at 1989 had a minor hit called The Gas Face, which is when you dislike someone or something. So you give them the gas face. It's approximately like, you just grit your teeth

and shake your head side to side vigorously. Be careful. You don't give yourself a headache while giving someone the gas face. Use the gas face sparingly. Zev Love X, the New York City rapper later to be known as MF Doom. He invented the gas face more or less. Anyway, in 1989, third base,

give MC Hammer the gas face. Somehow this is pre-you-can't touch this super fame, MC Hammer. MC Search was mad because he challenged MC Hammer to a dance off, and MC Hammer was like, fuck you. So Hammer gets the gas face. MC Hammer would have destroyed MC Search in a dance off, by the way. Vanilla Ice would have destroyed MC Search and a dance off also.

Anyways, the gas face, the song, establishes third base as somewhat of an authority figure in late 80s and early 90s rap culture, a self-appointed hip-hop tribunal of sorts, delivering gas faces from on. high. But P.W. Botha gets a gas face. That's P.W. Botha, the super racist South African politician who fought to preserve apartheid. Let me state clearly that P.W. Botha absolutely 200% deserves the gas face.

But I do think it's remarkable that P.W. Botha and M.C. Hammer both receive the gas face, like within 20 seconds of each other. on the song, the gas face. That is just an astonishingly broad ideological spectrum across which to distribute the gas face. It just speaks to the gas face's versatility as a weapon. Anyway, in May 1991, third base give Vanilla ice a thorough, bespoke song-length gas face of his very own. Hey, yo, I came from Cali, and they hooped it, they hooped it. But now you're getting sued kind of stupid.

This is the third base semi-hit pop goes the weasel. Vanilla Ice is the weasel. Henry Rollins, of all people, plays vanilla ice in the video. And Henry Rollins, as Vanilla Ice, catches a beat down from third base at the end of the video. Personally, I would not try to fight Henry Rollins, even if he was dressed at Vanilla Ice. But fortune favors the bold. I would argue that Jim Carrey did more damage to Vanilla Ice than Third Base if we're measuring reputational damage somehow. But this does bring up an intriguing hypothetical.

What happens if Vanilla Ice had signed to Def Jam instead? Same music, same dance moves, same wardrobe, fine. But Vanilla Ice is introduced to the world as a Def Jam artist, just like the Beastie Boys. To the Extreme is a Def Jam album. Ice Ice Baby is a Def Jam song, a super respected rap label, Vanilla Ice standing on various stages next to Chuck D, Def Jam artist and Avatar, the universally respected Chuck D. Third bass are on Def Jam. They're not going after Vanilla Ice if he's on their label. What happens if that at all happened? What doesn't happen? Is the Vanilla Ice backlash so harsh if he's got a stronger foundation within hip-hop? Maybe it wouldn't have made much difference.

But Vanilla Ice on Def Jam has way more people defending him and maybe not as many people attacking him. Right? Maybe. Maybe it doesn't matter. In Jeff Weiss's ringer piece, Vanilla Ice says, My image would have been different if I had signed a Jeff Jam, but it's hard to speculate how the record sales would have been impacted. A lot of people probably could see me being more respected with a crew like public enemy,

instead of being all alone and being put into the pop world. It probably would have happened on its own anyway, though. Ice Ice Baby was magical. It had fairy dust all over it. End quote. That's a silly way to put it, I guess, but fairy dust makes as much sense as anything I'm saying. The backlash ain't over, but this show is over. I don't want to talk about it.

Post-ice, Ice, you name it, I don't want to talk about it. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nope. The live album nobody likes? Nope. the feature film cool as ice no his various new metal uh dalliances the vanilla ice project his home improvement reality show that people apparently do like that's cool but nah the madonna sex book i don't think so i would talk about that actually but i don't have access to the madonna sex book somebody on ebay is selling four ripped out pages from the madonna sex book that featured

vanilla ice having sex with Madonna. Four pages double-sided $35 plus $5 shipping. $40 for four ripped out pages of Madonna's sex book.

In the eBay preview image, this person physically put strategic pieces of tape on these pages to conceal Madonna's nudity. And I ask you again, should I have expense this? $40 for four pages. of Madonna's sex book.

$298.94 plus $3.99 shipping and almost $23 in tax for Vanilla Ice's autobiography. $505 for the first Vanilla Ice CD plus tax. Three items, $870.

$65. The most legendary concur expense report ever devised. They will sing songs in my honor after I am a I will mention briefly one thing that happened to Vanilla Ice after Ice Ice Baby blew up one. That one thing is Vanilla Ice's appearance on the CBS program, Circus of the Stars in 1991.

Celebrities doing circus performances, Daredevil shit and what have you. Vanilla Ice, pop star, and disputed motocross champion rode a motorbike through a wall of fire, like a giant thick wooden wall that they lit on fire. I watched this happen on television. And I took the liberty of committing to memory, a quote from Vanilla Ice's pre-ride interview. Is everything cool? Everything's cool as ice.

I'm about to go check out this wall. All right. I'm about to go check out this wall. I will always remember Vanilla Ice saying that. It's way less vivid of a memory, but I will always remember vanilla ice going to check out the flaming wall and plowing through it. He was not ultimately victorious in an absolute historical cultural sense, but he taught us all a little something about ourselves, didn't he?

He taught us how to be a famous white rapper, what to do, what not to do. We learned. We adapted. And as the 90s rolled on, we utilized his teachings. We benefited from his example. and by the very end of the 90s, a new champion, a new superstar white rapper would emerge, forged in a vanilla ice's image, strengthened by his wisdom, and ready to carry us all into the 21st century. It's a very catchy song.

Vote or die. Our guest today is the great Tom Bryan, long-time writer and editor for Stereogum, and author of the new book, The Number One's 20 chart-topping hits that reveal the history of pop music. He's the tallest man in rock criticism. He's the best. Tom, welcome. Finally, we get Tom Brian. We've been trying for years, and here you are. Thank you for being here. Robert Van Harvilla. Stop. Collaborated listen.

I'm very excited to be one of the 120 people who explain the 90s. It's 90. It's that's, you know, it's a respectable number. It's time to collaborate. That's exactly the way to put this. Tom, is Vanilla Ice a good rapper and is Ice Ice Baby a good rap song? And can those two questions have different answers? They can and do have different answers.

They have to have different answers. Vanilla Ice is not a good rap. He's in some ways a sturdy presence. He has some of the things that you need to have to be a good rapper. He has a, is kind of his most fascinating sort of like audio quality to me is his like clear confidence. Like this is a guy who was never once considered the possibility that he might not be the coolest person in the world, which is a, which it's kind of his, his greatest strength and his greatest weakness at the same time, probably ultimately responsible for a great deal of his downfall. So no, he's not a good rapper. Ice Ice Baby, I don't know that I could call it a good rap song, but it's, it's a rap

song that has some strengths. It is a memorable rap song. It is in certain circumstances and effective rap song. It's not, you know, it's not like never going to be anyone's list of like what should be on the canon, like the pinnacle of the genre. But it does the job. If you're 10 years old and that song comes out and you hear it in a car, you start feeling like, oh,

I'm pretty cool. I feel like a cool guy right now. I was going to ask you what the certain circumstances are and be 10 and be somewhere is the answer to that question. Yeah. I was 10 years old when I said baby, came out. I was a gawky white kid at a predominantly black Baltimore Public School. So I don't think I could have been any more in the sweet spot. Like just right, right exactly where he wanted me to be.

That's where I was for vanilla eyes. So his cockiness stood out for you, even relative to rappers, right? Like it's sort of you have to be cocky to be a rapper, but even then he still sounds cocky to you above and beyond. you know i don't know if i could have articulated that at the time i thought he sounded yeah okay uh i don't know uh every rapper i guess sounded cool to me every rapper sounded cocky i don't i didn't make a lot of like qualitative distinctions between rappers at the time there was i don't think that's yeah sometimes it would be like do i know what this person is talking about versus do i not that was probably a big one at the time but it was like

fresh print so i'm like oh that's a story i can follow this story i don't i don't don't like my parents either. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense to me. Whereas like, I don't know, like public enemy, I was, I was pretty mystified. But on the very rare occasions when I would hear anything from public enemy, I was like, I don't, this is exciting, but also what? There was no there was no, there's no, nothing needed to be explained to me. Sure. I always think of him in terms of like the late 80s, early 90s pop crossovers, right? Like, wild thing, bust a move,

ice ice baby, like good vibrations. Like, you can't touch this, of course. Like, is he a good rapper relative to like the pop rap crossover, like part of rap music? Or is he still sort of faltering, you know, as an MC, you know,

even then? It feels ridiculous to consider whether he's a good rap almost. You know, it's like almost a not a relevant question. Like, is MC Hammer a good rapper? This was like a foremost, like, existential concern for rap critics in 1990.

It doesn't matter now. It's all the soup of nostalgia. So it's like, Vanilize is not a better rapper than Tone Lowe or Young MC or certainly like biz marquee, like forget about it. But like, you know, they all had their place. And it's, and because we know that none of them is dictating the future of the genre, then there's no reason almost to look at any of them with anything except a certain fondness, you know?

I guess maybe that's letting them off too easy. No, that's an excellent way to put it. I agree. But there's a thousand plus something number one songs in history. Like in the book, you can only write about 20. Like, is Ice Ice Baby on this list? Obviously, because it's the first rap song to top the hot 100. Like, just to be blunt, is it partly because he was white or mostly because he was white?

Him being white has a, I mean, you'd have to do a crazy pie chart breakdown to say why Ice Ice Baby was the first rap song. It is embarrassing as an American, frankly, that Ice Ice Baby was the first rap song. You know what the first rap song to top the Canadian singles chart was? Was it public enemy? No, it was rappers delight. 11 years before ice ice baby that's i've always said that canada is on the cutting edge of rap so there you go that's that's before drake was born rath had a number one hit in canada okay uh shout out canada vanilla ice being white

it's fun like i was trying to think about how i would have thought about that at the time when i was a kid and i feel like my reaction to that was like oh he's white, that's interesting, which was kind of my reaction to Bushwick Bill being a little person, you know? Right. It was like the fact that vanilla ice was white was like, oh, what an interesting gimmick, which also seems to be how vanilla ice processed the fact that vanilla ice was white. Yes.

But so there's this, there are so many like alternate timelines where Ice Ice Baby is not the first rap song. It was number one. There's all sorts of things that could have happened. if sound scan had been instituted early. I think Wild Thing by Tone Loke came very, very close to it. It got ripped off, right? Like, there's sort of a consensus that... Yeah, it could have very, very easily been that.

From what I've been told, Bushit by Salt and Pepper was selling a ridiculous amount of singles at the time. It was like outselling every other single by a ridiculous degree. if Capital Records had decided to press up cassette single copies of you can't touch this instead of only releasing it on 12-inch vinyl, then you can't touch this would have absolutely 100% been the first rap song to go to number one. It's just all, you know, it's all these things that kind of got in the way.

But also, so Ice Ice Baby is number one for one week, and then SBK Records also stops printing up a single. to make you buy the whole record. So if they had done that a week earlier, then the first rap song that went to number one would have been good vibrations by Marky Mark and the funky bunch. So we got off

easy in some ways. I guess we did. That is a bullet dodged on our part. Canada would never have spoken to us again. If that would push it, it would have been so rad. Ice Ice Maybe is a much better song than good vibrations. Absolutely. It's a far better rapper than

Mark Wahlberg. Okay, I'm glad we got that on the record. I do enjoy the wild side. Mark Wahlberg's the wild side where he says, blame it on a black man. What the heck? You know, that was, that's, that's, never mind. It's great. It's so, it's so moving. It's really

speaking to great treats. He's also good at saying, feel it, feel it. That's the best part of good vibration. And so are you. And you are good at imitating that. So there we go. I was shocked, honestly, when you wrote that nothing but a G-thing was almost a number one song, but

it peaked at number two behind Informer, which is very funny, like in a similarly sort of upsetting way. Like this tension between pop rap and actual lasting important rap. Like, is this a battle specific to the 90s at all? Or was Snow over Dr. Dre just like the 1992 version of Mack Lamore over Kendrick Lamar or something? An interesting question. I think if Informer by Snow had been an actual rap song instead of like a rap adjacent dancehall song, it would have never gone to number one because the backlash was already happening

in terms of like vanilla ice was off the charts, way off the charts by 93. Very much so. Snow is basically vanilla ice with a fake patois. Like that's his vibe. It's more,

it's not so much the fact that Informer got to number one, but like nothing but a G thing getting to number two is something that could not have happened in 1990. Right, because of sound scan. Yeah, and the actual like hardcore rap music that was coming out in 1990, like the NWA and public enemy type stuff, there's nowhere near the charts, like the singles charts. It just, it was not, it wasn't doing numbers there.

So I think soundscan has something to do with that. And I think there's like cultural changes. Like I think rap, the rap nation kind of took a look at Ice Ice Ice Baby. and said like, oh, no, like, we can't have this. We got to, we got to elevate different stuff. And that happened. So the Arsenio Hall of it all, like the third base of it all. Like, in general, do you think that other rappers, that Rap Nation had a right to be angry about him and to treat him like an antagonist and an interloper?

Like, do you think the rap world really gave him a chance? Or do you not get a chance after you've had like a fluke number one hit like this? I don't know. I think he was too funny. Like the two, like, Arsenio Hall and third base seemed to be angry about vanilla ice in a way that now strikes me as being funny. Yes. Whereas, like, Jim Carrey just mercilessly lankooned him. It's pretty rough.

Yeah. That's more effective, you know? It's like, like, pointing out the fact that this guy is funny is way. better than as a form of offense than saying like you're not real, you know, which is what Jim Carrey did. I don't think Jim Carrey actually wrote White, White Baby, but that's what the writing staff of In Living Color did to them. They did the same thing, but they did it in a funnier, more memorable way. I definitely remember everybody in my school knowing all the words to White White Baby the day.

after in Living Color hair, which Poppkins, the Weasel was not getting that kind of burned. All right. Herbass was popular in my elementary school, but not as popular as in Living Color. Not Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey did it to both vanilla ice and snow. Like the snow one is almost like meaner and like a more of an assassination if that's possible than White White Baby.

In Living Color was brutal to everybody. They really were. Yeah. Like, somewhat like the, the Paula Abdul one, I don't go and look that one up. It'll ruin your day. Like, you'll feel bad about it. But then the targets actually justify that kind of like venom. And I don't even know if it always justified it.

But like, it's just, it's such a, you know, it was just a big old softball just lobbed right up there for them. Like, what are they supposed to do with that? How could they not do white, white baby? That wasn't an option available to them. Sure. You've got another chapter about Puff Daddy's Can't Nobody Hold Me Down in 97. And like you write about how obvious Puff samples were. Like he's not crate digging.

He's not being clever. He just samples the message. He gets on with it. Like how much of the opposition to Ice Ice Baby was fueled by the queen sample, the obviousness of it. And the lawsuit. Like did Vanilla Ice kind of ruined sampling for everybody? Well, before I answer that,

I want to clear something. about Ice Ice Baby and under pressure. Even though I sampled it, but it's not the same. There's goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's the way theirs goes. Where his goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding a ding. That little bitty change. That little bitty change.

That's fantastic. We have both done that on the same podcast in 2022. It's such a beautiful career we've built for ourselves. I'm proud of us. Look at us. Look at us. So, all right. The obviousness of the sample, I think it's fun. You know, you think about Ice Ice Baby going to number one, being the first rap song to go to number one. If it wasn't Ice Ice Baby, it would have been another song.

Whereas like, you Mark, for example. Yes, exactly. Whereas the song that kind of like made sampling much more difficult and just legally and financially, you'd have to put a whole lot more work into it. If it hadn't been Ice Ice Baby, it would have been something else. I think, you know,

almost every big rap hit was also based on an obvious sample. Walk this way being like the first one. And then, you know, tone loke sampled Van Halen and foreigner, you know? So there is something being tapped into there, some sort of like collective memory. Vanilla ice using that under pressure baseline, it was kind of a perfect storm in a lot of ways.

One thing, he didn't do anything clever with it. He didn't switch it up at all. But also, like, under pressure was familiar and canonical to white people who didn't understand how rap works. And I think that made a difference. Whereas like nobody was getting mad about MC Hammer and Rick James in the same way because it's it it was obvious. You know, like it like there was there were structures in place where even though MC Hammer didn't clear the sample, he could make an agreement with Rick James quickly. And the people who knew Rick James records were also cognizant of rap music and sampling in the way that whole thing works. Ice Ice Baby was like kind of thrown up on the radio in a way where all these people who were like could hear it and be like, wait a minute, they're ripping off this other thing that I know and feel clever about it maybe.

So I mean, it's different from Puff Daddy sampling the message only in that Puff Daddy cleared his sample. It was like smart enough to do it. Okay. I'm sure people were still hearing the Puff Daddy record and being like, wait a minute. But it wasn't the same. It was not, even like by the time I'll be missing you comes out, right? Everybody who remembers the police, maybe because of Ice Ice Baby, they at least have some frame of reference, some context for like the way samples work, the way rap music works. Yeah.

It was kind of biz marquee. You know, the biz marquee sample was equally devastating, you know, for rap. Yeah, to him. And that was just on like a. album track. Right, right. That was not a number one yet. The same thing with, I mean, I think a lot of the problem is the artists who are being

sampled, Queen of David Bowie, Yilder Tsollivan, and the Turtles with De La Sol. The Turtles, right, yeah. James Brown could get sampled a bazillion times and kind of figured out a way to be like, yeah, all right, keep doing this, pay me X amount. Rick James, same deal. Van Halen. figured out a deal with Tone Loke and did not kind of go public with the idea of like, they're using my song.

What the hell? Queen and David Bowie and Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Turtles, I think could act all affronted about it and also like make a bunch of money off of it, which is what they did. Yeah. Do you personally think things would have turned out differently for Vanilla Ice if he'd signed a deaf jam? If he had somebody like Chuck D guiding him and co-signing him, the way Drey did for Eminem. Like, is there any version of Vanilla Ice's career where it doesn't all go to shit after Ice Ice Ice Baby?

It's so fun to think about him because the word is that Chuck D did want to sign him to Def Jam. And I read an interview with Willie D once where Willie D from the Ghetto Boys says he tried to get Vanilla Ice signed to Rapelod Records. I can't picture that. I can almost picture Def Jam, but that's, the rap lot is a little confounding. So if Vanilla Ice signs to Def Jam by way of Chuck D, then ital Ice isn't going to be rapping about black nationalist philosophy, you know? Right. He's not going to have the S1Ws on stage behind him.

It's, he's still going to be Vanilla Ice. And maybe, because he's signed to SBN, K Records, which was a pop label that he was label mates with Wilson Phillips and Technotronic. The guy who signed him is the father of Charles Copleman, the screenwriter, the guy who wrote Rounders, which is pretty funny. Yeah. That is funny. Jeez, that's a ringer core movie right there. Shout out Rounder. There's a, there's a great Charles Copleman like Twitter thread about when his father decided to sign Vanilla Ice and he was. dead set against it. He like

heard the record over the phone. It's good stuff. If Vanilla Ice had been kind of like pushed to black audiences, which was her his original like core audience first, the way the BC boys kind of were on Def Jam, then maybe things go differently. I don't know.

But he's still himself and he's still a big old ultra-confident cheeseball and he still would have rankled a lot of people, especially if he was as successful as he was. You know, and I think if the Def Jam label is on to the extreme, I think, you know, when it sells 7 million copies, I think a lot of like, oh, no, Raps Elvis is here, that those pieces in the source still get written, you know?

Sure. I don't think that provides him with that much of an umbrella. So I think whatever happened, like, I think honestly, in a lot of ways, it might have been like best case scenario for him because he got to blow up before he became a laughingstock. Whereas like, there we go. Yeah. Public enemy did eventually sign a white

rap group called young black teenagers who did not blow up. And who immediately were a laughing stock. That's probably for the bottle. I don't remember that one. Really? Do you guys scribble later of Total Request Live was a young black

teenager? That was where he at his start. All right. I'm telling you, man. I just know the name of the group and that's like the worst, you know, rap group name imaginable given the actual circumstances. And so that it's like a lot of, a lot of rappers signed white rappers.

It's like EZ signing blood of Abraham, you know? It's like the story with Chuck D. is not that he was super impressed with Vanilla Isis artistry. He saw him performing and was like, I could make a lot of money off of that guy, which is what everybody thought when they saw Vanilla Ice and they were all right. I do miss the era. Like, I think Vanilla Ice is dancing or like his performing had a lot to do with that. Like I do miss the era when rappers danced more, right? Like you think about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, like they were entertainers.

Are we better off now that dancing is almost never a factor with modern rap stars? or do you personally miss that elements a little bit? Well, like Lil Nas X dances, you know? There we go. There's choreography to be found out there. It's, no, I suppose, like, a pretty good dancer. That was, like, his, like, chief distinction early on, like, much more so than he's a good rapper. You know, I like showmanship.

Like, Big Daddy King was a great dancer and also a great rapper. But also, you know, like, I'm not going to be out here. being like they need to bring dancing back to rat music like that's a that's okay that's that's that's that's really you're paying a target on yourself if you're trying to make that argument that's true it's uh you know I think that was a fun little blip and then there was a million other fun little blips that came after it's uh um and and dancing has come back and then gone away again and then come back and then gone away again it's uh and it probably will happen again there's probably like maybe like bandman reel is really good at dancing i don't know but uh if he is

we'll find out soon like yeah ticot is going to bring dancing back in some sort of way there we go ticot there we go you know eyes would have been perfect for ticot he would have been so good at ticot can you imagine if ticot it existed in 1990 it's i mean you've got to take a lot of logical leaps to get i was going to say that's going to take me a while to work out that counterfactual but I get what you're saying. MC Hammer on TikTok would have really been like everybody wearing the pants and like going from one side of the room to the other on their tiptoes. Like yeah, that would have been something. Yeah.

Yeah. People talk sometimes about how Vanilla Ice's story is parallel to eight mile, right? Like he's Eminem and eight mile. Like he's a rough white kid. He goes to the big hip hop club. Everyone clowns on him. But like he earns their respects. But like he's also.

Does everybody talk about that, Rob? I see that a lot. I mean, yes, not everybody. Maybe not you. Maybe not, you know, your family. But I've seen, but he's also, he's, he's both the protagonist and the antagonist of eight mile because part of his downfall, right, is like he went to a fancy school in Dallas, right? His name is Robert Van Winkle.

Like, it's an authenticity crisis that feels a little quaint and ridiculous now. Like, is it weird that everyone sort of determined he was a fraud, you know, just based on his real name? and based on like where he went to high school. The Dallas versus Miami of it is kind of interesting because it's like, you know, Dallas could be a rough town too. And Dallas had a rap scene and Vinal Ice came up through it. I think the decision to present himself as being from Miami instead of Dallas.

I don't know how much Vanillaise had to do with that, which, you know, he also lived in Miami as well. I think certainly whatever publicist wrote the fraudulent bio, which I can't remember the whole story, but isn't it that he didn't feel like talking to a publicist? So the publicist made a bunch of stuff up. Is that how the apocryphal story goes? That sounds about right, but he definitely takes pains to distance himself. He's like, I didn't talk to anybody.

I never said I was from Miami. Yeah, I mean, and that's convenient for him. you know to shirk all responsibility but that sounds plausible that he just didn't want to talk to a PR person and they're like well he would he's he was he visited Miami once like why not sure yeah I think his real problem might be the fact that Robert van Winkle is a very funny name it is it's hilarious and I feel bad saying that but you're absolutely right it's just it just does not it whatever the opposite of roll off the tongue is it is it is that it does if he had been like Robert Logia.

That's like the first Robert that came into my head for some reason. Okay. Many fascinating hypotheticals you're presenting me with here, Tom. I'm still working out TikTok in 1990 and now you lay this on me. This is okay. Robert Logia had been vanilla ice. All right. Where?

Wow. Tom, do you personally enjoy any music, the vanilla ice made after ice made? Sice Baby into the extreme. Are you a mind-blowing guy? Are there any hidden gems we should know about? I would say I enjoy thinking about it more than I enjoy the actual music. But like when Ninja Rap was out, I was definitely, I remember going to see Ninja Turtles Secret of the Ouse with my brother.

Thank you for giving the full title. My brother, Jim. Of course. What happens in Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtles 2, Secret of the Ouse is that the Ninja Turtles are fighting Toka and Razar, and they slam through a wall into a nightclub where Vanilla Ice is performing. And he looks startled and concerned for about a second. And then the beat starts playing again, and he smiles and then starts rapping about the Ninja Turtles. So he's freestyling about the brawl taking place in front of him. Right. And so when we're leaving the theater,

I'm like, there's no way he could just make up the song about the Ninja Turtles off the top of his head. And my brother goes, I bet he could. It was a real, like, we're having our debate about the sort of, like, in the moment artistic abilities of Vinyl Ice to process this Ninja Turtle fight happening in front of him. I went to see Vanilla Ice Live during his rap metal era. Wow.

Oh, when was this then? Like, late 90s? Like, 98, I want to say. He put out an album, which I can't remember. remember the name of now, but it had a rap metal remake of um, of Ice Ice Ice Baby. And I remember it wasn't good, but I had a fun night. Also, um, the basest of Vanilla Ice's rap metal band is the current bassist of Weezer. What? Did you know this? Scott, is that Scott Shriner?

Yeah, that's him. Okay. Wow. From Vanilla, from New Metal Vanilla Ice to Weezer. That makes a ton of sense. In like a year. Like, very quickly. That is a totally logical artistic maneuver right there. Did you know that their names were Toka and Razar or did you look that up prior to this

conversation? Come on, man. You've been walking around with the villains in teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Seagir the Oos in your head. Well, they're not the villains. They're the henchmen. Shredder is the villain. Sorry, right. Okay. He turns in a super shredder? Yeah. Shredder gets exposed to

mutagen at the end of the movie and he becomes gigantic and then he is played by the professional wrestler Kevin Nash. Okay. So he doesn't become like seven stories tall. He just he just beefs up significantly. He's a little bit disappointing that he doesn't become a tie to you. Sure. Yeah, that's what I thought you meant.

But yeah, that is disappointing. But that's, you were the right person to talk to it. This is my last question, Tom. I'm like, 10 people on Earth are going to get this, but I'm doing it anyway. Vanilla ice, better than Nas. I knew exactly where this was going. I know you did. And I did it anyway.

No, he's not better than Nas. I'm not even going to say that. Come on, man. Okay. I tried. I had to try, Tom. I had to try. It's so good to talk to you, dude.

Thank you so much for being. What a blast, man. Rob, Rob. Let's get out of here. Or to your mother. You said it. Thanks, Tom. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Tom Bryan.

Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, I really must insist that you go listen to Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. We'll see you next week.