Vanilla Ice Goes from Has-Been Rapper to Wannabe Real Estate Guru

Seeking to become the next Tom Vu or Dave Del Dotto is rapper Vanilla Ice (né Robert Van Winkle), best known for his early Nineties mega-hit “Ice Ice Baby.” He has launched a website called Vanilla Ice Real Estate, which is apparently an outgrowth of some reality TV show he did called The Vanilla Ice Project.

Like Mr. T in the Flavorwave Oven infomercial, Vanilla Ice makes full use of his decades-old pop culture persona to sell his product. The video on his website features such hip hop tropes as luxury cribs, a Rolls Royce, and fanned-out $100 bills. Vanilla Ice promises to teach us how to “pimp out properties and get paid” with his “off the hook training” which will result in allowing you to “pop your collar and make ’em holla.”

If you actually follow Mr. Van Winkle’s instructions to give him your email address, you will be taken to this page, where a video promises a one-on-one strategy session “simple as a pimple.” So does that mean you could actually get a chance to interact with the great Vanilla Ice himself? No, he promises only that you will get a strategy session with one of his “team members.”

The free “Vanilla Ice Real Estate Investment Guide” lacks any dope rhymes or admonitions to “wax a chump like a candle.” Instead, it is a dull and dry 90 page ebook with passages such as:

The “pros” of enlisting a property management firm is that they usually have a solid leasing system already in place on how to manage properties, they have relationships with vendors like eviction attorneys and maintenance men who are needed to run a great management system and they can handle all the issues and calls with tenants. The “cons” are that they charge 10% of the gross rental income, which can account for a large percentage of your positive cash flow.

Word to your mother!

It is not clear what kind of person would find all of this appealing. People seriously thinking about real estate investing would likely be hesitant to risk their time and money on a system created by a has-been rapper who uses moldy slang in every other sentence. On the other hand, most of those in the urban hip hop community lack the capital required to invest in real estate…in addition to thinking Vanilla Ice is old and “straight whack.”

Nonetheless, I fervently hope that Vanilla Ice goes ahead and starts broadcasting a TV infomercial for his real estate investment system. If so, he would be the fourth member of the Surreal Life season two cast to have appeared on a TV infomercial (the others being Ron Jeremy, Erik Estrada, and Tammy Faye Bakker). Certainly it would be more entertaining that the latest Armando Montelongo snoozefest.

We will all be sadly disappointed, however, when it turns out the Vanilla Ice real estate investing system is actually lifted from the “Queen/David Bowie Real Estate Investing System.”