Wednesday Biography: Rob Van Winkle
Note: This is probably a lot longer than what I plan these biographies to be, but I kinda got lost in this one and made it extremely long.
Some of you may question, what does someone with the surname Van Winkle have to do with recent music or gaming? Well that’s because he’s more commonly known as Vanilla Ice. How did he get the nickname? Let’s jump right in!
Robert Matthew Van Winkle was born way back on the Halloween of ‘67. In his school years, he practiced breakdancing, which is where he got the nickname “Vanilla”, due to being the only person in the group that was white. Eventually, he started battle rapping at parties, and since he was good at it, his nickname evolved into “MC Vanilla.” After all of this he became part of a breakdance troupe, where he made his stage name “Vanilla Ice”, which was a combination of his nickname and one of his breakdance moves called “The Ice”.
Fast forward some years, after dropping out of high school...
Rob focused on his motocross career, where he won three titles in a row at the Grand National Championships in Dallas. Later on, he broke his ankle during a race, and lost interest in racing professionally for a while, using his spare time to practice his breakdancing. Eventually he was dared to go up on stage during an open mic night at a club, and the club manager invited him to come back and perform again. Rob accepted the invitation and started coming back. While performing at the club, named City Lights, he opened up for some of the big names, such as N.W.A, Public Enemy, Sinbad, 2 Live Crew, and even MC Hammer.
Rob performed at City Lights for a while, until he signed a contract with the owner, Tommy Quon. He opened for Stetsasonic, EPMD, Ice-T, and Sir Mix-A-Lot during the Stop the Violence Tour. During that time, Quon took note of Rob’s rapping and dancing, and got him into a recording studio, where he recorded “Play That Funky Music” as a single, and tacked on a song went on the B-side.
Quon sent out the single to radio stations around the U.S., but the song wasn’t played much, and when it was played, it didn’t get that great of a response. A disc jockey down in Georgia played the single’s B-side, instead of “Play That Funky Music”. That day, Ice Ice Baby quickly gained a fanbase, and radio stations started picking it up everywhere. Soon after, Quon set up a budget for the music video that would be made for Ice Ice Baby.
After the success of the song, Rob continued with his motocross career and jet skiing, and actually got up to #6 in the world in sit-down jet ski racing, which eventually got him a Kawasaki sponsorship.
Among other things during his downtime from music, Rob dabbled in real estate, renovating and flipping houses. He also joined a grunge band, but nothing came out of it.
Rob returned to the music industry close to the beginning of the 2000′s, and re-released Ice Ice Baby as a remix by DJ ReAnimator overseas called Ice Ice Baby 2001, which sparked an interest in his music in Europe. He also made more music, and made up to his 4th studio album during this time, but evidently, nothing came close to the success of the B-side miracle hit.
After his return, he strayed from music again to go and audition for the 2002 X Games freestyle division for motocross, in which he placed 7th.
Rob is still active in music, film, and events across the U.S. and Europe.