At the apex of his fame in the early nineties, Vanilla Ice never quite knew who might show up at the door of his former compound on Star Island in Florida back.
But if the palm trees quaked with the approach of an unidentified chopper, there was a better than even chance that Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar would soon be disembarking.
In a retrospective interview with Vlad TV, the Texas-born rapper — real name Robert Van Winkle — recalled his unlikely friendship with the late vice lord that blossomed out of a mutual obsession with boat and car racing.
“I hung out with Pablo Escobar many, many times,” Ice, 56, said wistfully, noting that his compound became a favored playground for legendary rogues who flourished in Florida at the time.
“They would land helicopters at my house constantly,” he said. “I would have food just for them in the refrigerators. I had my maids and everybody clean up after they left.”
Aware of the Escobar’s passion for competition, Ice said he once boasted that his fortified Porsche could outgun the Colombian’s prized Ferrari Testarossa.
The cars were soon lined up next to each other to settle the question.
“I smoked him,” Ice reminisced with pride.
In that pre-internet world, Ice said he knew little of Escobar’s background as the head of the deadly Medellín Cartel’s — or the illicit origins of his wealth.
“I didn’t have Google,” he said. “I didn’t know who these people are. I thought they were businessmen. They liked to race boats like I did.”
On some occasions, Escobar, who was shot dead in Colombia in 1993, would scoop him up for an unannounced field trip.
“They would take me in helicopters to these great events and race boats and look at all the cool stuff they were making,” he said. “That’s the kind of stuff we did. We would go out and race boats. We were always on boats. So there was always a bunch of bikinis floating around.”
Now a successful real estate investor and developer, Ice occasionally smiled in disbelief as he recounted his prior life, noting that he wrote his hit “Ice Ice Baby” at age 16 and never expected it to gain traction beyond Florida.
But the track would explode, vaulting to the top of all music sales charts and making the high school dropout an international sensation in a matter of weeks.
Raised by a single mother, Ice said he quickly became engulfed by his sudden notoriety and struggled with depression and purposelessness when his star faded almost as abruptly as it rose.
But once he conquered a reliance on drugs, Ice said he was able to pivot from rhymes to real estate.
A licensed general contractor for more than three decades and boasting a degree in design, Ice boasts an expansive property portfolio — along with a fleet of rare cars worth tens of millions of dollars.
He also has a brewery set to open in Lake Worth — along with an energy drink line that’s sold across the country.
“I’ve seen it all,” he said.
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