If you don’t already know, the gods were feeling trick-y on Halloween in 1967, when Robert Matthew Van Winkle was born into this world. Of course to us he’ll always be Vanilla Ice, and at the grown-ass age of 46, the man undoubtedly understands this now (please, no more nü-metal). So we hope it didn’t hurt his ego too much to visit the Today show in order to perform “Ice Ice Baby” next to break-dancers wearing Ninja Turtles costumes.
Because that really happened, and you can watch it above. Van Winkle announces his presence with a resounding, “Awwwwwwww yeeeeeaaaahhh,” and then launches into his 1990 song, which, yes, everybody still knows the words to (he tests the crowd at the start). Of course, that hit single had nothing to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise — Ice appeared in the second film, The Secret of the Ooze, performing “Ninja Rap.”
So rather sadly, we see in the video above, one man’s entire legacy summed up in four and a half minutes of novelty mashed up with nostalgia without regard to timeline or the true cultural significance of an artist’s greater oeuvre. Like, is no one gonna mention the fact that the dude gave Juggalos their favorite N-word, hence sparing thousands of white people in clown makeup the embarrassment of making racial faux pas in the name of the music?
No one?
//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/GFLGRidfFo4
