YMMV / Vanilla Ice

• Condemned by History: Ice is such an infamous example of this trope that he's practically famous now for being this trope. Ice did make a huge impact with To The Extreme, but as others have pointed out, he ultimately proved that it's a lot more difficult to make a Teen Idol (especially a white teen idol) within the context of Hip-Hop music, and once the controversies about his past happened, plus the gangsta movement making himself and guys like MC Hammer look tame, it was all over. He's managed to carve himself a fairly solid and dependable niche with juggalos, but as far as the mainstream is concerned, he's dead.
• Covered Up: "O.K.S.", from Bi-Polar, was originally an Insane Poetry song. It appeared on their album Faith in Chaos. Both versions were derived from the same recording.
• He Really Can Act: Though his Cool as Ice performance was panned, he's earned appraisal for his performance as Captain Hook in the Chatham, Kent Central Theatre pantomime production of Peter Pan.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: His song, "Ice Ice Baby", itself sampling Queen and David Bowie's bass notes from "Under Pressure", was sampled by Tyga for Bops Goin Brazy, effectly putting him in Queen's position when he first put out "Ice Ice Baby". We guess the cycle of sampling will never end.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Inverted - most of Vanilla Ice's fans nowadays tend to like his newer material better, although "Ice Ice Baby" is still widely popular.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This short interview snippet of Vanilla Ice eloquently explaining the sampling in "Ice Ice Baby" has become a popular response to blatant denials of plagiarism. "It's not the same!"
  • When he Tweeted a picture of himself in Egypt immediately memes started thanks to a certain vampire named after him who was also found in Egypt.
• Mis-blamed: When his original fall from fame occurred, he was widely derided as a bullshit artist who made up most of his childhood just to look hard. In reality, it was entirely the fault of SBK, who had authored an almost completely fake "biography" without his permission or knowledge to make up for the fact that he was exceedingly secretive about his personal life with the intention of protecting his family and was openly hostile towards anyone who pried (he famously told a Dallas Morning News reporter that his mother's profession was "none of (her) fucking business" when asked). His background, while not one of desperate poverty, wasn't exactly upper-class (he did live in middle-class suburbs for part of his childhood thanks to his stepfather, but he also spent plenty of time living in lower-income neighborhoods), and he had to spend a not-insignificant amount of time debunking claims made by the "biography".
  • He was also accused of plagiarizing "Under Pressure", and after several interviews in which he openly discussed sampling the song and talking about how he came up with the idea to sample the song, when one interviewer too many asked him about sampling the song, he decided to mess with the interviewer and said, "it's not the same. Theirs goes ding-diddy-ding-diddy-ding-ding. Ours goes ding-ding-ding-diddy-ding-ding."^note There is actually an extra note in the "Ice Ice Baby" melody, despite Ice's Sarcasm Mode. This comment was subsequently mistaken for an actual denial of sampling the song, and he got attacked for "stealing" the song, though David Bowie himself defended Vanilla Ice, saying that in The '60s, musicians used to take bits from older songs all the time^note such as Led Zeppelin from blues artists like Muddy Waters
• Narm: Vanilla Ice isn't exactly known for his deft lyricism.
  • A few critics got a chuckle out of "Steppin' so hard like a German Nazi" from "Play That Funky Music."
  • The girl described in "Stop That Train" was apparently "moaning and groaning like she could take on The A-Team."
  • All of "I Love You," a cheesy love ballad rapped by Vanilla Ice, capped off by an extra-cheesy phone call skit at the end of the song. As Steve Huey of Allmusic put it, the song 'makes LL Cool J's "I Need Love" sound like "Straight Outta Compton."'
  • On the Narm page for music, a still from the video for "Ice Ice Baby" was the previous page image.
• Narm Charm: "The Ninja Rap". Nothing like being on the soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze to cement your credibility. But it's a hell of a dance track.
  • Same with "I Love You," mentioned above.
  • As cheesy as "Ice Ice Baby" is, you can’t deny that it's at least a fun song.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: To the Extreme, his debut album, is mostly remembered these days for multiple sampling controversies.
• Sampled Up: "Ice Ice Baby", from Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure".
• Signature Song: "Ice Ice Baby."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ice's second album, Mind Blowin', saw him change his image to a harder, more 'gangsta' style, that emulated Cypress Hill and Das EFX. Suffice to say, it failed pretty hard at reinventing him. The ode to marijuana, "Roll 'Em Up," was the first single, and it did him no favors.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Many people dislike "Ice Ice Baby" because he blatantly sampled "Under Pressure." While many other rappers sample songs in their music, this is different than most instances of sampling for a couple of reasons:
  • 1. He hadn't gotten permission from Queen and David Bowie to use the sample.
  • 2. "Under Pressure" was a major hit that came out less than a decade before "Ice Ice Baby", whereas most rappers tend to sample songs that are older and more obscure to the general public.

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