3. Vanilla Ice Never Lied To Get "Street Cred"
Ever read about meme theory? A lot of the things that are embedded into our minds about certain celebrities are far from the truth. Sometimes it's an honest mistake and simply bad reporting and sometimes stories almost write themselves. Vanilla Ice had that turning point when his record company created a bio without telling him that was filled with exaggerations about his life. Reporters were quick to jump on the bandwagon that Vanilla Ice was a fraud (right at the same time, the group Milli Vanilli were exposed to having never even sung any of the songs they were supposedly making) and it was a lot easier to write a story about a white kid that wanted to be black then to write a story about how rich businessmen exaggerated someone's past to sell records. Vanilla Ice was an easy target and at the time, you couldn't do a quick Google search to hear a different side of the story. It was very one sided; Vanilla Ice was a liar and you were stupid for ever falling for it in the first place. The truth is, of course, not as simple as that. Like originally stated, Vanilla Ice's record company released a bio without his authorization. Before that, Ice had on purpose changed some aspects of his life story when talking to the press to protect his family and the people he was talking about (such as the location of where he was stabbed) and the press had done their job screwing things up either on purpose or simply for being lazy (Ice having gone to one of the same schools as 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell was somehow altered to Vanilla Ice and Luther Campbell being former school buddies - despite the fact that Luther Campbell is about 10 years older than Ice). Vanilla Ice's early life were however filled with heartache and pain. He never knew his father, one of his many stepfathers was very violent, he had a pretty spiteful relationships with his half-brothers, as a teenager he took part in illegal street racing and was often arrested (Ice's record company actually located the old arrest warrants when the press were attacking him 24/7). Before signing a deal with Quon, Ice was actually a drug dealer, selling ecstasy and crack to pay for studio time to record his songs. While living in Miami as a teen, he would go to the clubs with a fake ID to sell drugs and witnessed a lot of terrible things that he wasn't proud about and would never incorpirate into his music. In one of his newer songs, he actually raps about how he's never "met a G that talks about that dirt" or "hustlers bragging about their work". Right before making it big with Tommy Quon in South Dallas, Ice was living in his car, doing nothing but breakdancing during the day for cash and then hitting the clubs at night trying to make connections. For five years, he played to an all Black crowd and opened up for acts like NWA, Public Enemy, Ice-T, Stetsasonic, EPMD and Sir Mix a Lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kwx0SqcIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwqZVzJg4lU We are currently living in a world of fabricated stars with fabricated lives and it's funny when people still use "Vanilla Ice" as a term for a "fake rapper" when he never did anything to really gain that dishonorable stamp.