When I get on the phone with Vanilla Ice, he’s hanging out with Salt N Pepa at a radio station in California, fondly recalling the early ’90s. “I had a three year weekend,” he says. “We went out and made the party happen.”

Born Robert Matthew Van Winkle, the 49-year-old rapper and entrepreneur is synonymous with ’90s culture and music. When he was 16, he wrote ‘Ice Ice Baby’, the song that would eventually change the course of his entire life. It was officially released in 1990, and quickly shot to number one on the Billboard charts, along with his second album To The Extreme. 

It was the very first time a hip-hop track had topped the charts, and not just in the USA — ‘Ice Ice Baby’ reached number one in Australia, Canada, and the UK too.

His entire musical career would remain overshadowed by that colossal success.

Though he would release five more albums between 1990 and 2011, Van Winkle failed to chart at all, let alone reaching the top spot ever again. Instead, he turned to reality TV, where he featured on shows including Celebrity Boxing, The Surreal Life, and his own home renovation program The Vanilla Ice Project. Still, he can forever lay claim to being the first rapper — and certainly the first white rapper — to achieve such widespread success and global popularity.

More than three decades after penning the tune that changed it all, Van Winkle has found his stride where he first left it: the 1990s.

Along with Salt N Pepa, Coolio, Tone Loc and others, Vanilla Ice will be bringing the ‘I Love The ’90s’ tour to Australia in June. “It’s completely taken on a life of it’s own,” he says of the show, which has already toured the USA. “People come dressed up like Ninja Turtles, with fanny packs, all the girls are dressed in neon. It’s so cool to see everybody get into theme when they come out. I love it.”

Ahead of the tour, we spoke with the man himself about the ’90s, hip-hop then and now and his legacy. It was… interesting.

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You’re coming to Australia for the ‘I Love The ‘90s Tour’. What did you love about the ‘90s that you still love today?

Oh my god, every single thing. It’s all about fashion. It’s pop culture. We were drag racing, cruising the streets, looking for girls, doing burnouts, putting in subwoofers in our backseats. We got our movies at Blockbuster.

“We got our movies at Blockbuster”

The ’90s had such an impact on everything in pop culture that they call the years 2000 to 2017 the ‘lost generation’, because nothing can really define it. If you go a hundred years down the line, and you look back at 2000 to 2017, there’s no pop culture or fashion that really defines it. We had all the neon colours. We’d have underage keg drinking parties!

Then “freak” came out in the ’90s. You’d meet a girl, you wouldn’t know her name. She’d just bend over, and you’d be freaking on her all night long. At the end of the night, you still never got her name, it was just a great night. That was all thanks to R Kelly. He was singing ‘Bump N Grind’ and people were getting their freak on.

Yeah, a lot of those hits are still played everywhere today.

It was just such a movement. It took on a life on its own. My daughter, she goes into Hot Topic or wherever, and you see the ’90s all over again. All the kids are wearing Hi-tops, they’ve got neon colours. The girls are all wearing Spandex. It’s all the same because they’re the ‘lost generation’. They don’t have anything that really defines them today, so people go back to the good times.

I have a lot of young fans that come to my shows, most of them wasn’t even born during ‘Ice Ice Baby’, but they gravitate towards it, they want to live it, they know it was magical and they love it. Thank god for YouTube, because they know all the lyrics!

Do you still enjoy playing ‘Ice Ice Baby’?

I love it. It never gets old. I can play it a billion more times. It’s as magical as it was the first time I wrote it when I was 16 years old, it’s amazing. That’s an anthem. I cater to the crowd, and I feed off their energy. When you see that, it’s hard to not join in the party. It’s party time, you know?

Hip-hop’s come such a long way in the time since it first came out. Did you think it would grow and expand like it has since then?

Personally I don’t think anything has changed in hip-hop whatsoever since the minute it came out.

I think it’s all hip-hop. I don’t care if you’re rapping over a rock band like Korn, or Limp Bizkit or Rage Against The Machine. I don’t care if you’re slowing it down and you’re doing trap music like Future or Drake. I don’t care if you’re singing over a chorus. I don’t care if you’re rapping over a country beat like Kid Rock, if you’re rapping over Frank Sinatra, or Elvis Presley. It doesn’t matter. You’re rapping.

“Everybody can make all these big stories about diversity and evolution of hip-hop. Forget it, it’s all the same shit”

Everybody can make all these big stories about diversity and evolution of hip-hop. Forget it, it’s all the same shit. They’re just rapping over something different.

It’s all part of poetry. That’s what it is, and that’s what got me into it. I love poetry. I read poetry. I love it, I love it, I love it. It’s a passion of mine, and it led to me being a musician and writing songs, and giving people my diary. I tell stories in my song. They’re very personal.

You’ve said that hip-hop has a lot to thank you for, given you were one of the first to achieve such massive mainstream success, breaking down barriers for hip-hop’s future. Do you still feel this way?

Yeah, I mean, if you want to think about that. I never do think about things like that. Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery. I just kinda move on day by day. I yawn, I stretch, and I do it every day. I don’t have an ego. I don’t do anything for money. I’ve had plenty of that since I’ve started this. That’s never been a thing that motivates or pushes me to succeed.

“Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery”

When other people say it, I appreciate them for recognising that. I do it for the thrill of the art. I don’t think about, “Oh, I’m the first white rapper,” or “I sold 163 million records.” I mean, there’s a lot of phenomena in my whole story.

I tell my daughters, “Girls, I can go buy you all the Louis Vuitton shoes you want, and I can go buy you all the Prada purses and all that, and I can make you the biggest house, and you can drive in your Aston Martins, but let me tell you girls something. If you don’t accomplish something yourself, you’ll never appreciate anything.”

So, for me, it’s not about the accomplishment to make the pay check. It’s about the thrill of the adventure, because it makes you feel alive.

I Love The ’90s Tour Dates

Auckland — Saturday June 3 at Trusts Arena
Christchurch — Sunday June 4 at Horncastle Arena
Melbourne — Wednesday June 7 at Hisense Arena
Sydney — Friday June 9 at Qudos Bank Arena
Brisbane — Saturday June 10 at Eatons Hill Hotel
Perth — Tuesday June 13 at Perth Arena