"Ice Ice Baby" rapper Vanilla Ice whose real name is Robert Van Winkle was booked and arrested for domestic violence charges. The Grammy nominated rapper who was labeled a "one hit wonder" had a successful single in the early 1990's with the song "Ice Ice Baby." The White rapper was parodied by comedian Jim Carrey on the comedy sketch show "In Living Color" with the skit "White White Baby".
Arsenio Hall interviews Vanilla Ice about MC Hammer
Many in the hip hop community felt that Vanilla Ice represented that true hip hop was dead. He was also accused of stealing his rap from black college students fraternity chant music and manufacturing his biography to gain "street cred." When Van Winkle's Ice Ice Baby first hit the airwaves he was known only as Vanilla Ice and a biography issued by Van Winkle and his manager contained many outright lies. First, the bio indicated that he attended an all-black high school in Miami and learned to rap from the black kids in his school when he was walking home. source
There was also the belief that Vanilla Ice represented that rap becoming too commercial and manufactured. He had a public feud with rapper MC Hammer and was labeled as the "Elvis Presley" of rap music because he was a White rapper who was performing in the African-American genre of hip-hop. Click here to read more. Watch an example of Vanilla Ice's temper during his visit to MTV. Vanilla Ice was supposed to smash his "Ice Ice Baby" music video tape with a baseball bat. Robert breaks the tape and also destroys the MTV set with a baseball bat.
Rapper and recent reality TV star Vanilla Ice was arrested and booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Thursday night on a charge of simple domestic battery after his wife called deputies to say her husband was hitting and kicking her.
Deputies arrived at their Wellington home around 7:15 p.m. to find the 40-year-old star, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, on his motorcycle, two blocks from their home. Back at the house on Trianon Place, Laura Van Winkle appeared uninjured and was less forthcoming, saying she did not want to deal with media attention but wants a divorce, according to a deputy's report. She said her husband had not hit or kicked her, but had pushed her.
"He started yelling at me for going out to buy a bedroom set. In front of my daughter," she told a deputy, the arrest report says. "I'm sorry I can't say any more until I talk to an attorney."
Her husband, in turn, told deputies that he and his wife had been arguing since the previous day.
He said his wife is bipolar and takes medication but still has irrational and argumentative episodes and had thrown a picture frame from a rear balcony to the ground, where it shattered near him and their 8- and 10-year-old children.
He denied pushing his wife, the report says. He said he left on his motorcycle so they could cool down. source
