They come off not as a bad imitation of hard-core rap but as a peculiar new hybrid: half rap and half small-town high school pep rally. Is Ice afraid that all the attention, the money, the platinum records, will disappear someday? I always set new goals, and that’s my new goal, to be here, keep it goin’!The media can try and break me all they want, but the bottom line,” he hoarsely insists, ”is it’s ” His eyes are now glittering, presumably with fever; time to go. ”I just thought you should know,” he says, ”that Ice made it to the session.There’s no way he’s going to get up and do a show tonight, but there’s a slim hope that he’ll be able to drag himself downstairs for a photo session later with the story’s photographer, Jeff Katz. Believe it or not, appearances matter a lot to Vanilla Ice.
This combination has to set some kind of media record.He approaches his career with deadly seriousness (everything matters to him, big-time) and he has the seemingly compulsive propensity for exaggeration often found among wayward types who grew up with big ambitions and limited prospects. I the way I used to be, and if I could go back and change it I would.Vanilla Ice didn’t just go to a lot of different schools, he ”went to more different schools than anybody.” His mother isn’t just cool, she’s ”the coolest person on earth.” Everything about him, from the words of his raps to the car he drives — an Acura NSX, ”the fastest sports car on earth” — is the most, the best, ”to the extreme.” This, you figure, is one of the ways he gets himself in trouble. I feel so terrible now inside because I beat those people up, hurtin’ these people for no reason…” He lies back with his eyes closed.Nobody disputes that he was born in Miami and raised there in racially mixed areas, or, as his mother, Beth Miño, has confirmed, that ”he was definitely in a lot of trouble.” Miño — who cared for Ice and his older half brother by herself for most of Ice’s early years — was a pianist and music teacher.But when you ask Ice if she made him study piano, he says, ”She never made me do anything.