NEWS. . . BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Vanilla Ice took over the airwaves with their chart-topping single Ice Ice Baby in the ’90s. Decades later, he is still at the top.

The 56-year-old rapper, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, rose to fame overnight with this hip-hop track from the summer of 1990, which notably samples the bass line from the song Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.

In addition to topping the Billboard Hot One Hundred chart in the United States, the song, also created through K. Kennedy and DJ Earthquake, took off in Australia, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

But after a brief resurgence on the charts with his popular cover of Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music, he temporarily disappeared from the public eye.

But his musical good fortune turned into millions of dollars, and the rapper is known for purchasing several houses in his 20s. In the late 1990s, he followed his hobby by becoming a structural contractor and operating in real estate.

“I made Ice Ice Baby when I was 16, and then it blew up and we were smoothly promoting a million records a day. Way beyond all my expectations,” he explained on Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast.

After his house was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he repaired it and sold it for a huge sum. This temporarily led him to build a bona fide real estate empire.

He explained that although he had “bought other houses around the country,” he “never saw them” because he had been hiking for 3 years, even though he had bought a space next to actor Michael J. Fox.

At that moment he thought, “Well, I’m young, I’m stupid, maybe I spent all this money.   » I have never noticed them. » Then he “sells them all. ”

He continued, “I sold them all and they sold out temporarily and I made millions for doing nothing!I didn’t even change the carpet.

“And I’m like, ‘Shit, let’s stop buying a bunch more. ‘” I bought houses and still do. I now have a procedure for buying houses that takes 30 years to understand how it works.

The former Dancing on Ice star has also hosted his own asset structure show, The Vanilla Ice Project, since 2010, which takes audiences with him as he renovates homes.

Whatever his method, it’s working as the latest figures from Celebrity Net Worth value the hip-hop artist at $20m (£15m).

In a 2020 interview, he talked about Ice Ice Baby’s immense good luck.

He said at the time: “It was beyond a forest fire, beyond a tsunami. Just an incredible hit, so fast and incredibly impactful, to the point where we look back 30 years later and Ice Ice Baby has become, in fact, a defining anthem of the ’90s.

“All you have to do is play Ice Ice Baby and not forget everything you wore, who you dated, how vulgar and vulgar we were. The ’90s had just that attitude.

In 2018, the father of two divorced his wife Laura and, in court documents received through the Daily Mail, was still earning a whopping $800,000 a year with 15 houses among his assets.

The rapper is rarely the first artist to still cash in on a huge hit from the ’90s. Earlier this year, Fat Les musician and comedian Keith Allen admitted that he still makes millions from the parody song of the 1998 football match, Vindaloo.

When asked if he still receives money in royalties, the 70-year-old actor replied: “Oh my God, yes, a lot, around £20,000 a year. I mean, I get more money from Vindaloo [number two in the United Kingdom in 1998 through Fat Menos] than from a lot of things.

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