SBK 95325
Producers: Vanilla Ice, Earthquake, Khayree, Paul Loomis, George Anderson, David Deberry, Kim Sharp, Wayne Stallings, and Darryl Williams
Track listing: Ice Ice Baby / Yo Vanilla / Stop That Train / Hooked / Ice Is Workin’ It / Life Is a Fantasy / Play That Funky Music / Dancin’ / Go Ill / It’s a Party / Juice to Get Loose Boy / Ice Cold / Rasta Man / I Love You / Havin’ a Roni
November 10, 1990
16 weeks
With M.C. Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em showing the incredible commercial potential of rap music, the timing was perfect for Robert Van Winkle to become a star. Under the name Vanilla Ice, the young rapper had a pop sensibility like Hammer and teen-idol good looks like Elvis, which made his brand of rap music safe enough for white preteens in the suburbs. Yet Vanilla Ice wasn’t an overnight sensation.
The Miami-born Van Winkle fell in love with rap when he heard the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1980, when he was 12. Van Winkle’s love of rap stayed with him as his family relocated to Dallas and he was bumped from school to school. In 1987, he entered a talent contest at the City Lights nightclub in Dallas. The club’s owner, Tommy Quon, was impressed enough to sign on as his manager on the spot. At Quon’s club, Ice opened for such future chart-toppers as Tone Loc and Paula Abdul. He later laid down demo tracks with City Lights’ DJ Earthquake.
“We were shopping for a record deal, but no one was interested,” Ice recalls. Undaunted, Quon decided to form his own record label, Ultrax, and release Ice’s music himself. The single he issued featured a cover of Wild Cherry’s 1976 Number One hit “Play That Funky Music” on the A-side and a cut called “Ice Ice Baby” on the flip. The latter track borrowed a sample from the Queen-David Bowie collaboration “Under Pressure.”
The single was serviced to urban radio stations in March 1990, but failed to make a dent until several months later, when a DJ named Darrell J at WAGH Columbus, Georgia, flipped it over and started playing “Ice Ice Baby.” The single, and Ice’s album Hooked, released in July on Ultrax, started to sell. Meanwhile, a low-budget video became the Number One request on the newly established Video Jukebox Network.
The buzz on Ice was sufficient to elicit interest from some of the major labels that had initially turned Ice down. By August, SBK Records had inked Ice to a deal. The label decided to release Hooked under a new title, To the Extreme, with new artwork. One song, a cover of the Rolling Stones classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” was deleted for legal reasons, although Ice’s version of the song would later turn up on his follow-up album Extremely Live.
With the muscle of SBK behind it, “Ice Ice Baby” became the first rap song ever to top the Hot 100 on November 3, 1990. The week “Ice Ice Baby” hit the summit, SBK deleted the single to spur album sales. The strategy paid off as To the Extreme knocked M.C. Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em from the Number One spot for good a week later. At the time, Ice was Hammer’s opening act.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of November 10, 1990
1. To the Extreme, Vanilla Ice
2. Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, M.C. Hammer
3. The Razors Edge, AC/DC
4. Mariah Carey, Mariah Carey
5. Wilson Phillips, Wilson Phillips