A poor excuse for a musician who stole Queen and David Bowie's memorable bassline and piano intro from "Under Pressure", and sampled it into "Ice, Ice, Baby" and then denied it publicly.
Not a huge influence to white people to do rap at all, that was the Beastie Boys who were performing a decade before he even started, so get your facts straight!
Ice was a guy who got big because of the record company but because of that, he was told to lie and do whatever they said because they owned him like most record companies do with artist. He got a bad rap because most people if they were offered that money would fall under that trap too so kinda sucks since he gets blamed for dresing like Hammer and all that crap when the company told him to. Oh well least he didnt commit suicide like a lot of people do in situations like that.
Real Name: Robert Van Winkle
One fo the poorest excuses for a musician ever to grace the late 80's/early 90's. He sampled the bassline and piano intro from Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure", using it as the only musical basis for the one-hit-wonder, "Ice Ice Baby" and then denied it publicly, claiming it to be coincidence.
1. Vanilla Ice was not the first white rapper - there was at least the Beastie Boys before (and much better and arguably authentic)
2. You don't rip off on the track for a rap song because it is generally based on other tracks - originally it was by mixing records (as in the Sugar Hill gang) and then it was sampled - when "Ice Ice Baby" was done there were still lots of problems about copyright of the original sampled tune (notably with James Brown who everybody used)as the music industry hadn't quite come to terms with the music. A lot of them only came to terms with the original musicians if their song became a hit
3. Crap record but he did try to do it properly - it is probably as much the music industry's fault as his that it became a hit as they weren't exactly into promoting balck hip-hop or rap acts who were much better
4. Wiggers pre-dated him - white rastas pre-dated him - Ahmet Ertegun pre-dated him - what's the problem?
Vanilla Ice was the first famous white rapper with his first single 'Ice Ice Baby' being the biggest selling record ever, selling over 17 million copies.
Although the fame was short lived, the Ice man influenced many white rappers today, Ice was the first white man to have the balls to do what was mainly considered black only music.
He now is a heavy metal singer, but still does his rapping. On his latest album, bi-polar, the first half of the album is metal, the second being rap. Featuring ICP on one track.
Most people who defined the ice man dont know what they are talking about, saying he influenced wiggers is wrong because he was around while most of these people were still wearing nappies and probaly listened to him.
Got hung off of a balcony by Suge Knight, because he refused to sign over the rights to 'ice ice baby'. He later said he thought it was a good thing because the extortion financed the careers of tupac and snoop dogg.