Whether you know it or not, you’ve heard the music of Robert Matthew Van Winkle dozens of times. His stage name is Vanilla Ice and his song “Ice Ice Baby” has garnered hundreds of millions of views on YouTube alone. Or, for you Ninja Turtles fans, he’s the “Ninja Rap” emcee.
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But what does the now-55-year-old Dallas-born rapper have to say outside of his popular, albeit goofy tracks? For the artist, who grew up in Texas without his dad, there is a lot on his mind about the world, his life, his craft and more. These are the best 30 Vanilla Ice quotes.
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1. “One thing I didn’t understand in life was that I had $100,000,000 in the bank and I couldn’t buy happiness. I had everything: mansions, yachts, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, but I was depressed. I didn’t know where I fit in. But then I found family and friends and I learned the value of life.”
2. “Negativity spreads faster than any Justin Bieber song.”
3. “My breakdancing crew used to go to the mall and squat a piece of cardboard there; we had our jam box, and I’d spin on my head and make about forty bucks a day, which was pretty good back then. I was only 14 years old, so I would chase the girls around the mall and eat some pizza and have some change left over.”
4. “I bring people on stage with me. It’s a good time, and people love to join in on the party. Show me a smile, and I’ll show you one back.”
5. “I do a lot of TV stuff, but I also turn a lot down—it’s got to be an adventure.”
6. “Another car is not going to help me out, a nicer car, I’ve already got it. A bigger house ain’t gonna do anything for me, and you know, a yacht, it’s not going to do anything for me anymore. So how can I find happiness?”
7. “I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that’s how the album came out so dark.”
8. “I used the music as therapy, and it’s just amazing that I feel so free after doing that. I feel like I had it trapped inside of me and now I feel free. So it’s been a very good therapy session for me as well.”
9. “I’ve never left music behind, but I’ve had success in television.”
10. “Shows have been sold out. It’s overwhelming. I had no idea what to expect with this new sound and everything and just to see so many people just come out and embrace it, it’s overwhelming.”
11. “I have a very broad demographic, from the 8-year-old who knows every word to ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and the college kid who grew up on ‘Ninja Rap’ to the soccer mom and grandparents.”
12. “A lot of people think I was an overnight success, but I was an opening act for three or four years, and then I signed my contract with EMI. Then it kind of blew up overnight.”
13. “I didn’t want the public in my personal life at all—I thought that people might perceive me as too normal, and I’d lose that larger-than-life rock star persona. You’ve got to protect that!”
14. “Listen, if you don’t talk big game, you never get anywhere. If you don’t think big, you don’t get big. Some people call it egotistical, some people call it high hopes, some people call it confidence. It’s all in how you want to dissect it.”
15. “It’s about enjoying your life. If you have no family, no friends to enjoy it with, it don’t matter how much you have, how much success you have, how much fame you have, how much money you have, it doesn’t matter.”
16. “I don’t have any reason to hate anybody; I believe in good karma and spreading good energy.”
17. “I turn my negatives into my positives because one of my mottoes is, ‘Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery,’ meaning that you can’t go back and change anything in the past.”
18. “I know this will blow your mind, but most people would probably never ever get it, but I listen to classical music when nobody else is around. It calms me down and I can get into this deep thinking mode because there’s really no lyrics to it, so you’re not following something that – that you’re listening to a story.”
19. “Rap is from the streets and I’m from the streets. That’s why a lot of people accept me.”
20. “My mom raised me to be clean, so it’s in my nature. I have two little girls, and I’m married, but we’ve got a nanny and a maid.”
21. “Learn from my mistakes and you don’t have to make them yourself.”
22. “With the mega-fame came the mega-downfall—with the press and everything—and at a young age, it was very stressful to me.”
23. “I meet everybody. If somebody invites me to their house and they got a drum set close, I’m going to play, man. Let’s jam. I don’t care. Get in where you fit in and enjoy the experience.”
24. “It took me a while and a lot of hard times to figure out my purpose, I am so happy with my life. I just want to help make other people happy, too.”
25. “I turned a lot of people in white America—and not just white America, but middle-class America – into hip-hoppers, you know?”
26. “When ‘Ice Ice Baby’ was selling a million records a day, I bought several properties: a home next to Michael J. Fox in L.A., a palace in Miami and a mountain cabin in Utah. Then, a few years later, I took a break from touring, saw that my properties had cobwebs, so I sold them, and—to my surprise—I made a huge profit!”
27. “I’ve never met anybody in this world like me.”
28.”I don’t harp on what I could change about the past, because I can’t go back and change it. But definitely a lot of things I would change.”
29. “It wasn’t until ’94 when I tried to commit suicide that I realized that it wasn’t about the money.”
30. “I didn’t end up going bankrupt… I made some great investments and I held on to my money, which also enables me to have the freedom to do what I want now. But it’s not about finances. No matter what, it’s about keeping it real.”
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