RadioMONDO Reviews: Vanilla Ice

The hype and subsequent fallout over van Winkle's street cred and the vitriol launched at him by haters for his (gasp!) sampling notwithstanding I find this an amusing piece of the 90's mainstreaming of hip hop (that's right, i said "hip hop"). Just like Elvis was promoted to sell rock and roll to a segregated retail public over the black musicians he idolised, Vanilla Ice moved hip hop into the collective consciousness of a demographic that was still segregated in their musical tastes, though less so, in the latter half of the 20th century.

This single was innovative in that it, much like the Beastie Boys, samples white rock music instead mining the black music archives. I think, therein, lies the animosity: to the kid that grew up on what's now termed "classic rock" this was blasphemy perpetrated by one of their own. Hip hop purists dismissed Vanilla Ice as an interloper in a genre they felt was "for us by us". Of course, now all this has little relevance as hip hop has come to embrace all cultures and it's less about who you are so much as what you contribute to the genre.

It's hard for even the haters to deny the impact this song had on a public besotted by MTV and the increasingly corporate-controlled FM radio. I gave it 4/5 stars because, not only do i like the song, there's a reason for it being a #1 Billboard hit.