Vanilla Ice was one of the most famous musicians in the early 1990s; his songs “Ice Ice Baby” and “Play That Funky Music” were not only popular upon their release but have also become classics for music lovers of every generation.
In a recent interview with VLAD TV, the now 56-year-old artist explained that he hung out with infamous drug dealer Pablo Escobar all the time in the early 90s; even though they were friends, Vanilla Ice told the press that he had no idea what Pablo did for a living. Vanilla Ice said, “We were all friends. … They would land helicopters in my house constantly, on Star Island. Come into my house, I had food just for them in the refrigerators.”
Ice also said that he and Escobar had met and cultivated their friendship through a mutual love of speedboats. He said, “They would take me in the helicopter, we’d go to these great events and race boats and look at all the cool stuff that they were making.” In fact, Vanilla Ice still loves race boats, and he made it clear that Pablo Escobar did a lot to make boat racing popular by putting an infinite amount of money into the sport, and for that, Ice is certainly grateful to him.
But Vanilla Ice said he had no idea that he was hanging out with the planet’s most notorious drug lord at the time. He said to the VLAD TV interviewer, “I never questioned, we didn’t have Google. I don’t know who these people are. I thought they were businessmen. They like to race boats like I did.”
And expanded by saying, “This sounds ridiculous. First of all, like, I had no Google. You don’t go up to people and go, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I have no idea, bro. Guy’s loaded. … And we’d go out and race boats, we were always on boats. There was always a bunch of bikinis floating around everywhere.”
Although, as Ice claims, there was no Google at the time, some fans are struggling to believe that Pablo Escobar’s reputation wasn’t common information in the early 1990s. The Colombian drug lord was and is one of the biggest dealers the planet has ever seen. However, it could be true that Vanilla Ice was just hanging out with his friend, Pablo, and watching speed boats race.
Ice says he didn’t know who Pablo really was until the FBI showed up at his house to question the rapper about his friend. They were, of course, trying to find any way they could to arrest the known drug dealer. But it wasn’t long after that interview that Pablo Escobar was killed in Colombia by the local authorities, ending the drug dealer’s life, as well as his interesting friendship with Vanilla Ice.
