Vanilla Ice recently discussed how he feels he has impacted Hip Hop.
“Sampling barriers, I broke down,” Vanilla Ice said in a recent interview with xxlmag.com. “They made a spectacle out of it and it made it okay for Puff Daddy and everybody else to go make music. They figured it out. There was nobody before me that I could use as a guideline. [I] took rap mainstream. I had the first Rap song that had ever been #1 on the Pop charts. The most-sold Rap record in the history of the world, and that’s extreme. 160 million. The fastest-selling [Hip Hop album] of all time, and it still stands today. I don’t think it will ever be broken at this point.”
During the interview, Ice was also asked if he would return to music.
“I never really leave music,” Ice said. “I love poetry, I’m always writing poems. One day I will [come back]. It’s not a light switch. I don’t do it for financial reasons, I make music ’cause it’s my diary and I love poetry. I will always make music, I never left it. Right now I’m into construction and real estate. The show is #1 on the network, and I’m really proud of it. We’re enjoying the experience. When you have a couple of passions that you really love, I don’t think you have to focus on just one.”
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Another passion of his is acting, though he says he remains focused on his work in television.
“Well I just had a movie with Adam Sandler called That’s My Boy,” Vanilla Ice said. “It did well at the box office. I do plan to continue with my acting but I’m not focusing on that right now, I’m focusing on the Amish thing. After the Amish show airs we’re filming right now another season [of the ‘Vanilla Ice Project’]. I’m definitely going to continue with real estate. It’s fun. It’s a passion. It’s been bad news for real estate for about eight years and people are trying to get back into living the dream, which is owning your own home and decorating it the way you want. Many people’s dream has been ripped right out from in front of them because of foreclosures and tuition or something like that. This puts people in a different mindset. It’s motivating and inspirational and we come up with some great ideas.”
Vanilla Ice Discusses His Program, “Vanilla Ice Goes Amish”
His new program “Vanilla Ice Goes Amish” appears on the DIY network. During the interview, Ice also spoke about his experiences while making the show.
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“I got chores,” he said. “I had to shovel pig shit, manure and scatter it across the field for fertilization. I had to clean the stalls, I had to dag the sheep, which means I had to groom the hair that grows on the sheep and trim it off. I put the world’s first Vanilla Ice zig-zag hairdo on a sheep. I had the shaped line in the back of my hair so I did that on a sheep and it was hilarious. I drove a buggie everywhere, drove it through a drive-thru. I wanted to kill the rooster and make breakfast with it. And just feeding the animals, taking care of the babies. I had to help a cat give birth. Its head got stuck half way out. I had to reach in there and pull this thing out. It was at the same time disgusting and emotional, too. So I had to birth this very cute and beautiful little baby cat that I named Baby Ice. You just get used to it after a while. You get used to taking showers once a week. It’s the way they do it and if you really want to walk in their shoes, you’ve got to do it like that.”
Vanilla Ice released his 1989 debut album, Hooked, a project that featured his most successful hit to date, “Ice Ice Baby.” The song sampled a bass line from David Bowie and Queen’s hit, “Under Pressure.” The song was later re-released on SBK Records for Vanilla Ice’s follow-up album, 1990’s To the Extreme. The album’s second single, “Play that Funky Music,” became Ice’s second hit. That track sampled Wild Cherry’s song by the same name.
