The Unexpected Second Life of Vanilla Ice

Summary

The Dale Jr. Download

Episode: "The Unexpected Second Life of Vanilla Ice"

Date: June 3, 2026
Host: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Guest: Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)

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Episode Overview

In a unique and high-energy episode, Dale Earnhardt Jr. welcomes Rob Van Winkle—better known as Vanilla Ice—for an honest, wide-ranging conversation on music, fame, burnout, redemption, and surprising second acts. Vanilla Ice opens up about his journey from global rap stardom to rock bottom, how he rebuilt his life through real estate, the persistent role of his hit "Ice Ice Baby," and the joy he finds in family, cars, and staying busy. The episode is as much about resilience and reinvention as it is about nostalgia and passion, all delivered in a candid, humorous, and motivational tone.

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Key Topics & Discussion Highlights

1. Childhood, Independence & Early Hustle

• Growing up in Texas and Florida ([08:15])

  • Born in Dallas, moved between states, largely unsupervised and independent.
  • Relates tales of dumpster diving for shoes, BMX bike hustles, and using creativity to get by when money was scarce.

  "I was the cool new shoe kid. I could get anybody new shoes, man." — Vanilla Ice ([09:22])

• Competitive Drive and Motocross ([10:19])

  • A self-starter who balanced racing motocross and breakdancing.
  • Insights on personal responsibility, the power of commitment, and lessons from stepdad and mother.

  "Ain't nobody going to twist the throttle for you. You got to do it yourself, man. You got to pin it to win it." — Vanilla Ice ([12:16])

2. Breakdancing, Music, and the Birth of a Hit

• Breakdancing Origins and Entrepreneurship ([12:40])

  • Started breakdancing for money at the mall; hustled bike rides to classmates.
  • Drew on movies like Beat Street for inspiration.

  "At my age, I had more money than all the rich kids because I could go out and hustle." ([13:20])

• Rise of "Ice Ice Baby" ([16:12])

  • Discusses early ambition, dealing with doubters—even his mom told him white boys don’t rap.
  • Massive, unexpected global explosion of "Ice Ice Baby."

  "Over 600 million records sold. Who could ever imagine anything like that?" ([18:59])

3. The Burden & Blessing of a Massive Hit

• Love/Hate Relationship with Fame and "Ice Ice Baby" ([18:14])

  • Initially wanted to distance himself from his hit, struggled with identity.
  • Talks about the "weekend that lasted three years"—a period of confusion, addiction, and escaping reality.
  • The process of making peace with his legacy and the importance of staying active.

  "Instead of like most people hitting the shore and they sit there and they go, 'Whoo, I never want to go through that again.' I'm more of the guy that says, 'I'm swim out and get another wave.'"—Vanilla Ice ([18:33])

• Addiction, Crisis, and Recovery ([28:33]–[34:10])

  • Details his spiral into addiction, near-death wake-up call, and return to roots via racing and family.

  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, man. And I, I have definitely rebuilt myself." ([34:00])

  • Credits his children for grounding him and reframing his life perspective.

  "They keep you grounded, they give you a purpose other than yourself. And that right there is more motivation to straighten up and fly straight." ([31:15])

4. Reinvention Through Real Estate & TV

• Building the Vanilla Ice Project ([39:21]–[51:23])

  • Transitioned into real estate after Hurricane Andrew destroyed his home; discovered a passion for renovation and design.
  • Details shrewd strategies for acquiring valuable properties (tax liens, auctions).
  • The TV show "Vanilla Ice Project" arose after a Behind the Music producer noticed his Forbes story.

  "I have completely crushed it in real estate, like beyond what you could imagine. Like beyond even the ice, ice, baby. Real estate, you can print your own money." ([53:18])

  • Show highlights: over 100 million viewers, now signed with HBO, renowned for creative, over-the-top renovations catering largely to women ("2,000-square-foot bathrooms", car rotisseries, floral prints).

• Dale Jr.’s Connection ([40:31])

  • Dale and his wife found inspiration for their own home renovation from Vanilla Ice’s show.

5. The Car Collection & Earnhardt Connection

• Classic Cars, Museums, and Sentimentality ([56:46]–[63:43])
  • Ice keeps his original 5.0 Mustang and a special Dale Earnhardt Sr. car—the Dodge kit car significant in Dale Sr.'s career.

  "It's one of the most amazing stories ever written with any racing of any form... It's like Elvis, man. It is. You are America's heartbeat, dude." — Vanilla Ice ([57:14])

  • Owns a museum with 31 cars, including memorabilia-laden pieces like Dean Martin's Continental (linked to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Rat Pack).

6. Nostalgia, Parenting, and Living in the Moment

• Generational Differences ([35:36])

  • Laments the loss of old-school passions, car culture, impatience for a driver’s license.

  "They don't have that passion no more." ([36:13])

  • Tales of encouraging his own kids to find joy in simple, active pursuits ("climb a tree").

• Being a Dad ([70:44])

  • Greatest joy; four daughters, family trips, passing on values and nostalgia.

  "Greatest thing in life. Best accomplishment I've ever had. By far." ([70:44])

7. Current Projects & Life Mindset

• Active Projects ([64:20])

  • Vanilla Ice Brewery, St. Augustine beachfront homes, focus on creating art through homes.
  • Still performs on the "I Love the 90s" tour with Salt N Pepa, Tone Loke, Young MC, and others—eight years running.

• Time Management & Aging with Purpose ([68:25])

  • Managing career, passion projects, and fatherhood through time management skills.
  • Commitment to living actively and enjoying every day without overplanning the distant future.

  "Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery. You never know what tomorrow's going to bring..." ([75:59])

• Pride in American Identity ([76:30])

  • Proud of the opportunity to celebrate the U.S.'s 250th anniversary; reflection on unity and not letting division overshadow good times.

8. Music Industry Memories & Friendship

• Touring Stories ([78:22])
  • Fond memories of Rob Base, Tone Loke, Tupac, Biz Markie, and others.
  • Reflection on mortality and the passage of time within the music industry.

  "You got to make the best of every moment and, you know, enjoy this life because it's over quick, man." ([79:36])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Meeting Dale and the Value of Heritage:

  "Your daddy's car...you are America's heartbeat, dude. And we love you." — Vanilla Ice ([57:14])

• On "Ice Ice Baby":

  "There was a moment I didn't want to play that song...But instead of like most people hitting the shore and they sit there and they go, 'Whoo, I never want to go through that again.' I'm more of the guy that says, 'I'm swim out and get another wave.'" ([18:24])

• On Real Estate Success:

  "I have completely crushed it in real estate, like beyond what you could imagine. Like beyond even the ice, ice, baby. It's unreal, really." ([53:18])

• On Recovery and Family:

  "They keep you grounded, they give you a purpose other than yourself...That's what it takes. You have to reprogram yourself." ([31:15])

• On Enjoying Life:

  "Smiles are contagious. And if you sit around in the sorrow and soaking in all these negative things, you'll live that life and it'll be a miserable life...And you'll never go dancing. Gotta dance." ([80:00])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Motocross & Hustle Origins: [08:15] - [14:35]
• Breakdancing & Early Ambition: [12:40] - [14:35]
• Explosion of "Ice Ice Baby" & Dealing with Fame: [16:12] - [18:59]
• Struggles with Celebrity, Addiction, & Recovery: [28:33] - [34:10]
• Real Estate Journey & TV Pivot: [39:21] - [51:23]
• Car Collection and Earnhardt Sr. Stories: [56:46] - [63:43]
• Parenting, Nostalgia, and Life Lessons: [70:44] - [80:05]
• Favorite Music Industry Tours & Friends: [78:17] - [80:05]

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Takeaways

• Resilience and Reinvention: Vanilla Ice offers a rare look into the personal cost of fame and the power of starting over, championing both ambition and humility.
• Passion Projects Can Lead to Second Acts: His enthusiasm for real estate and design is infectious—a model for finding creativity and success beyond one’s primary field.
• Family, Heritage, and Community: Consistent threads throughout—whether talking cars, music, or parenting—are gratitude for roots and a commitment to giving back.
• Live in the Present: Both Dale Jr. and Vanilla Ice share a philosophy of seizing the day, not dwelling on the past or excessively planning the future, but relishing each experience.

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Language & Tone

The episode is energetic, honest, and sprinkled with humor and lived-in wisdom. Both men are candid about struggles and authentic in praise, keeping the conversation accessible and engaging even for listeners unfamiliar with racing or Vanilla Ice’s full story. The back-and-forth is warm, at times reverent (especially about family and legacy), but never loses its light touch.

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Transcript

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Your daddy's car. This is how I learned about you and your dad and the whole story. It's, you know, it's one of the most amazing stories ever written with any racing of any form, of anything at all. You know, from Ferrari to Fittipaldi's to all your stories of these famous racers and Schumachers and everybody. There is no bigger name your dad has taken on in you of this race life. Another like Elvis man. It's like Elvis, man. It is. It is. You are America's heartbeat, dude.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale Jr.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Should I say it?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Stale Jr's podcast. I gotta say it. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr back again for another episode of the Dale Jr download. We got a unique show for you today. Yeah, everybody knows we. We love NASCAR around here, but every now and then we have a guest who's not nascar. We've had wrestlers and baseball players and football players and all types, musicians, singers. Well, we got Vanilla Ice coming on the show today. Rob Van Winkle. I've met him multiple times throughout my life. Throughout his life, our paths have crossed multiple times. And we're going to talk about that. He also owns a Dale Earnhardt race car. We're going to hear about that story. And I once saw him doing home renovations. He's turned this into a television show, and he's apparently very successful in real estate. I did not have that on my bingo card back in 2011when I first saw it on TV. I'm like, Damn. So I need to know about that. Is that real? Is that what he's doing these days? Well, he's here to talk about it. Let's bring him into the studio. This episode is presented by Arby's. New meat in 3 bucks. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. How you doing, man?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I'm good, bud.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Good to see you again.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Been a while. Yeah. Last time I saw you is at Pocono. Coming through to. To promote a movie as part of.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's right. And with Adam Sandler.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. We'd met before. We'd seen each other. Vegas, a time or two.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh, man. You remembered that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I do. You know, I remember that. You know why? Because I'd never heard the rock version of Ice Ice, Baby. And we were on the side. We had a little VIP table off to the side of the stage.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you had the full band up there and came up there, and I was like, damn, this is like reborn. This song is good.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Hell, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, it was turning.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Turn you into a teenager again all over.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It was so good because that's. I'm kind of like a big fan of that. That brand of music sound rock. But I mean, of course, I was a. You know, when I was a kid, I was listening to all the, all the stuff you're making. But yeah, anyhow, great to have you here. We try to get you here and, and listen, 58 years old, hey, that is crazy.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Is that how old you are? That is crazy. I'm the oldest teenager here. I don't know about you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm only saying that, man, because you

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

don't look at, hey, man, you know,

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

how are you doing that?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Low lighting, vegetables.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

23 year vegetarian, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No kidding.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Now I have bad blood type, AB negative and I had to change my eating habits and I'm trying to stay alive, not a heart attack, so.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, you look like you're doing a good job.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Worked out pretty well. I'm on the dance floor still.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know, man, you're busy, you're, you know, I see a lot of your content following on social media. Been following you a long, long time. So I've been kind of keeping up what you got going on. And your energy, your attitude, your personality is, is like infectious, man. And, and I, and it's genuine and so, and we all kind of want that, right? We all, we all kind of. You know, I got a couple kids that are five and eight and I get home and I'm tired and I'm like, man, I wish I had their energy, you know, I got an 8 year old too. I know you're, that, you're that guy that still, like at your age, as wide open as you are.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You know how it works with those kids, they can't, they don't know that you had your legs hurt and you had a long day. You've been out in the yard working or racing or whatever you're doing, and you come home and it's time to play, man. Chasing, you know, through the house and yeah, rest isn't done matter, but they keep you young. And that's what it's all about. And my mom always said, you know, if you keep dancing, you'll stay young forever. I said, and she used phrases on me, you know, she's like, if you, if you keep dancing, you'll always be happy. And I says, why is that, Mom? She says, you can't dance if you're miserable.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I said, okay. So her philosophy was, don't take anything in life too serious. Enjoy the ride and enjoy happiness. So every day, wake up and put your dancing shoes on. Not literally, but in a sense, I understand. Of your mind.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. People tell me, man, don't slow down, stay moving, keep busy. I always think like man, when am I going to chill? When am I going to start working? When am I going to start doing these passion projects and things like that? But it's kind of like, man, I'm afraid if I do that, the aches and all that stuff's gonna creep in.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

No, you can't, you can't rest. You know, the older you get, you got to keep moving and grooving, man. That's the way it works. Otherwise that rust catches up to you and you. I raised motocross, so I got a lot of pains, man. I just, it's hard to tell this story in a cool way, but a week ago I was pulling water hose and I tripped over a sprinkler head that was, stayed up and I fell over and dislocated my shoulder and it came out to here on me and I had to pop it back in about 27. I was like 27 seconds in. Major pain.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And it just went back in by itself. And I was like, but that's motocross for you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I yelled, nobody listened to me. I'm out in the yard. But it would have been crazy if somebody's walking their dog by. But it was a freak accident, you know, I just fell down. But these things happen, you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And you got pain everywhere.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So. Born in Texas.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I was born in Texas. I was born in Dallas. Right. Baylor Hospital on Halloween.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. And you grew up between Texas and Florida, but you ended up getting back to Texas when your music career started kicking off.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Other way. Other way. Yeah. Texas. Went to R.L. turner High School, then came from there. And it just basically I had a girlfriend. My mom had moved to Miami with my stepdad and he worked at Oprah Tamkin Chevrolet over there. And. And I was like, no, I got a girlfriend. I'm gonna stay here in Texas.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And it didn't work out.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How old were you?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Sixteen.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And she let you? Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I was independent. All independent. Oh yeah. I have an older brother. And you know, I, I, I honestly I really didn't have much supervision as a kid. I don't have, I didn't have any dad. So no figure there to tell you stop doing that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Don't do this or whatever, you know. But I had freedom. So I was a dumpster diver and I'd ride my BMX bike, man. And I had a old beat up diamondback and I would ride that thing all the way to Harry Hines over there. Pass. All the hookers didn't even know what the Hookers were.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And go into this trash can where I could get sneakers. And I had all. And we were broke, and we had all new sneakers. My mom, what size do you wear? And I'd go in there, and they were blemished, so they throw away anyone that had, like, a little string hanging off of it. And they were almost brand new. Perfect, right? And yet look close to find the blemish. But that's the reason they would throw them away. So the whole dumpster was full of shoes. I'd go over there and everybody always have new shoes. Yeah. I was the cool new shoe kid. I could get anybody new shoes, man. Shouldn't have been going that far. Had too much freedom as a kid. And that was my life, man. Mom just said, you know, watch out. I don't know. She was at work all day, and I never had any super.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What did she do for a living?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Who, my mom? Yeah, my mom is. She's a piano teacher, flute teacher, voice teacher, music teacher.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah. I never sit down for any lessons.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I wished I would have. That was too cool. Yeah, I'm not playing piano, man. I'm a motocrosser now. I do play the piano. I love it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How did you. How did. So you did get into motocross racing. How did that. So that you being a motocross racer and also being into being in. You know, being into breakdancing and. And rapping and all those things. How did that. How did those two things coexist? Because they don't seem like you would. You would be doing one and the other at the same time. But you were.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So you learn when you. When you're a racer, you know, when the gate drops, a bull stops. That's a phrase that you go by and you live by. And that means, you know, you got to pin it to win it. There's nobody else out here going to do anything for you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I had a time where I was with my stepdad. He had came out there and he had bought me some bikes and stuff. And, you know, chain. Fix my chain, tighten it up, tighten my spokes, get everything. Air filter ready to go. And here we are at the race. And I'd go out there and get third or fourth place or something. And he'd be really mad at me, man. Like, upset, you know, Like, I'd not talk to you, man. What's on. I mean, there's 40 racers. I got third place. You're way better than these guys that beat you, man. I said what do you mean? He says, you got to you. I went in your room last night, and I know you were chasing the. And you were out. Sorry for my language. So. Chasing the cat. And you know. And you know.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And I was.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

It was 3:00am I had a girlfriend. I'm 15, you know, and he's like, you don't commit if you don't commit. I ain't going to commit. You can change your own tires now. You can do your own work, haul your bikes to the track and everything, you know, and you're like, oh, my God. I'm super grateful for everything. I don't know what to do. He goes, you're on your own. Didn't say a word to me all the way home, all week, Nothing. And he just. I guess he let me marinate on my thoughts. And I told my girlfriend, I can't come over here anymore, honey. It's. It's not going to happen. I'm. And my mom, I. My mom was funny because she said, if you don't have calluses on your hands, I know you're not practicing after school.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So you have to do your homework. And I said, you, me telling me I don't have to do any homework if I practice? She goes, no. So my dirt bike was always in the back of my truck every day at school, and I had to go practice. Yeah. And she told my principal, he don't do homework.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Not at all.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

He's committed to motocross now. And that's how I learned about the word commitment. Ain't nobody going to twist the throttle for you. You got to do it yourself, man. You got to pin it to win it. And like I said, you know, when you get drops, there's nobody that can make you go from first to last or last to first and third to first. And I ended up beating those three guys that beat me quite often after that. And I learned it takes more practice and more commitment than the next guy. You got to want to win, to want to do it, you know?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So how did. How did breakdancing. Poetry. How did those things get into your life?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So the competitiveness of all that and the. And the independence of being someone that has to do it on your own. The drive, the ambition, and the purpose is all I needed. So I grew up watching breakdancing movies like Turbo and Ozone. I don't know if you remember those. They were like, Beat Street. We're going back to the 80s. Yeah. And when we were little kids, you had these breakdance movies that had this movement come out. And you were like, how does this guy do the wave?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

How does this guy do all these cool moves and spin on his head like that? Well, that was me. And I had cardboard, and I'd go to the mall and I'd make 40 bucks a day.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I chase the girls around, eat some pizza, have some change left over, and I'd make more money. And I told you, we were broke. But at my age, I had more money than all the rich kids because I could go out and hustle, break dance and come home. And I knew the right door to be at because that's where most people will go in and out. And the security guards loved it, man. We had a little jam box. The batteries go dead. I said, man, run. Grab some batteries in there quick. You know, Put the new batteries in. People are coming, coming out, especially on the holidays, man, we would crush it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

40 bucks a day back in the 80s was a lot of money for a kid 15 years old. All the other kids I knew that were rich, they only had, like, five bucks allowance. That was it. Five bucks all week. And I would take their five bucks, and I would get that money, too, because I was the only kid that was allowed to have a dirt bike.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I. And I knew that if I let these kids wanted to ride these dirt bikes so bad, and their parents would never let them have a dirt bike, you're going to get hurt. And I knew it. And I knew they had $5 in their pocket. And I went out to that field and I said, y' all meet me after school. I got the field, and you ride my bike around, like, six, seven laps, and I make five bucks from you. Five. I had them lined up, man. Really come home with 20 bucks. Oh, man. Cover the gas, cover my everything. I always had money.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And. And we were broke. We couldn't rub two nickels together.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

It's funny, because when I raced motocross and I started doing good and professional, I'd make 1500 bucks on a weekend, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I'd come. My brother, he was older. He used to. You were cool now. He used to beat me up a lot. You know, he could have been the cool brother that took me fishing. No, he beat me up a lot. We're cool now. But I would go. It motivated me. And I would go into Piggly Wiggly where he worked and stacking groceries, and I'd go in his line, and I'd fan that money at it, and I'd be like, man, sure. Is getting hot in here. What else can we buy today? You know, let's buy some more. And he'd be sitting there stacking the groceries. Let me stack my, you know, and he'd probably beat me up that morning. But we're cool now. We laugh about it. Yeah. But it's funny stuff of motivation of that how you get to where you are. Yeah. And those are kind of the key points that gave me my competitive drive.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So how do, do you, do you think back? I mean, I know that your life, man, there's a lot of that happened, a lot of successes. You won, you won a lot of races, won championships in motocross. Obviously everybody is well aware of your singing career. But do you? Do you. So I was born into the racing thing. My dad was a racer. His dad was a racer.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I know your whole story, but so like I know your life story probably like everybody else does, do what was there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you didn't have that. You weren't born into what you ended up becoming. Right. So like you created this, you created yourself, made. Do you look back and think like, damn, how did that happen? Do you have moments where, where there are moments in your life where you're sitting there going, how in the hell I get here? You know, in the peak of your success? Or was it that it makes sense because like you, it made sense.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I knew where I was going. I'm super, like I said, competitive. But I'm also, you know, one thing kids don't have today is that ambition. The drive and a purpose and a meaning. Those four things right there is everything it takes to be successful. And without one, you're just a little bit back. You're only 75. You take another one, you're 50, you take another one, you're 25%. How much effort and commitment you going to put towards what you're doing? How much do you believe in yourself? Are you going to turn a dream into reality? Can you come from where you are just because no one else ever has? Can white people rap? My mom even told me, white boys don't rap, honey, go get a job. And that's what my mom should have done because she was making my car payments on my 5.0. And the rule was if, if you can make the payments, you can get it and I'll co sign for you. Three payments in, she was making them. So it was, honey, white boys don't rap. And I said, mom, I do. And it wasn't even three months later that I ended up buying her house. And car and everything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Just like that.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, it was really. Yeah. And she's now my biggest fan.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But let me ask.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

It was normal for her.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So let me ask you this. I, you know, I grew up. I grew up and experienced your. Your. Your explosion onto the scene all the way through all of those things to when they write it behind the music on you. I see you on. You know, I see you flipping houses. I know now you're 58 years old. You have all of this wisdom and you've come from. You've come back from the dead multiple times. Right. I mean, so I asked. I asked that question. The song Ice Ice Baby. How. What type? Like, I have to imagine that throughout your entire life, your relationship and your emotional connection to that song has been a roller coaster. Oh, yeah, right. I mean, I sit here as somebody who's never wrote a song in their life, can't play an instrument, and think, damn, man, it'd be badass to have something like that. Like, had that one.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

It's ultimate.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know that you're global because of that song. Right. But I imagine it wasn't always something like that for you. Right? There was some.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

There's a moment I didn't want to play that song. Right. And I hit that about that time I met you because I was doing the rock version. It was kind of my anti me.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You were? Yeah. I needed to bailing a little bit against it.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I had to figure out my purpose and meaning in life again after the kind of the wave hit the shore. But instead of like most people hitting the shore and they sit there and they go, who? I never want to go through that again. I'm more of the guy that says I'm swim out and get another wave. And I did, and I am. And that's me. I got to stay active and moving.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you made. I don't want to say made peace with that song, but like you.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You found out a way to. You found out a way to. To embrace it.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Well, you got to get rid of your demons. You got to face your demons and beat the hell out of them and get them out of there and come back on the dance floor like mama said. And that's what I did. And you know, I had a moment there where, you know, I couldn't separate my life from my. My entertainment life from my real life. And it took me like I had a weekend that lasted three years for me. I had to learn because it was incredible impact. I had no idea that it was going to be that big right. We're over 600 million records sold. Who could ever imagine anything like that? Or even half or quarter of a fraction of that? Right before me, there was only run DMC and they sold 500,000 copies, which was in. Hip hop was the hugest, biggest record. We were like, oh, my God, we've. Hip hop has made it. Run DMC is huge, man. Aerosmith, Walk this way with rap. Huge. All you remember mtv. Oh, my God. And we thought that was it. And then my record came out and my video only cost us $5,000 to make. And that was when they were making like multi million dollar videos with Michael Jackson and stuff. And we're like, this will never make it. This will never make it with this cheap ass video. Number one, most highest rated video of all MTV ever played. And I can't. Still can't believe it. And I'm just like, you know, during the whole experience, I'm like, I couldn't believe it either. And then I got a phone call says, do. Would you like to be in the Ninja Turtles movie and make the theme song? And I myself, I'm like, yeah. I mean. And then you're gonna pay me. I'll do this for free or I'll pay you to do it. I was already a Ninja Turtle fan. Yeah. And for all these things to just kind of evolve along the way is just part of, I guess, you know, the history and the impact of everything that the Vanilla Ice has done. Because I can look back at it and go, wow. To me, it seems like yesterday. Time goes fast. Yeah. Which is more of a reason that I'm so positive today. Because it's going by, you know, too damn fast and fast. I want to slow it down and live, you know, and absorb the stuff and the stuff I've seen in my family, my friends and all my little kids and all the stuff around me. It's. It's go so fast. When you're doing that stuff, you never get to absorb any of it or enjoy any of it. So I'm enjoying my life now a lot more than I did then. And it has been a roller coaster.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Dirty Mo Media has a new show coming out, this Cowboy Life. It's featuring Tiffany and Jerome Davis. They are the PBR's royal couple. And you won't want to miss it. Here's the trailer. Bring the energy.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Wake up. I can tell that through all these stories, through all your, you know, your

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

world championship, I know that in your

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

head you've always said, I'm going to be a Podcaster one day. You know, I hope that at the

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

end of the day that it'll bring somebody that hasn't really been around this life that we live, and it brings them to a whole new world. And somebody will say, dang, maybe them

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

cowboys ain't so bad after all.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I think if you can bring some smiles. I love to hear Jerome's stories and just how he carries himself. So I'm all about, if people can get a grin out of it, if

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

they can smile a little bit, what's it gonna be like, Jerome, to have Tiffany as a co host to a podcast?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Whoa, man. See, this gift of gab I have, Maybe it'll come in a little handy on this deal. If I keep Tiffany quiet every now

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

and then so she'll let me talk,

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

we'll be in good shape.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

The only bad thing is I'm gonna

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

have to hear your stories that I've

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

heard a hundred million times.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I'm gonna have to hear them another time.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And they just get better every time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, they do get a little more added into them. I don't know why she puts up to me and why she helps living this life that we go through, but

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

she does, and she's. She's awesome. It's March 14, 1998, from when they opened the gate to when you get hit. What do you remember from that?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The bull I had that night was knock him out John, and I'd been on him before, and he had hit me in the face in Vegas with. So I knew that I had to really stay over the front end and try not to let him hit me in the face. As it worked that night, he got me rocked back and hit me in the face and knocked me out. When he did, I dove in the ground, broke my neck. Went from being at the top of my game to the worst part of my life, you know, all happened within a gate opening at a bull run. I was. I was mad at God because I was like, why did you do this to Jerome? He's a good guy. You needed him on your team out here. We were supposed to be getting married in May.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Right after I got hurt. I was at the hospital, and I

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

told Tiff, I said, I don't think

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

this is going to work.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You need to. We need to regroup. This is not the trail you need to be going down. And if she would have left that day, I wouldn't have blamed her. You know what I mean? And I never would have said a

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

bad word about her.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I never gave thought about leaving that

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

wasn't an option because I still had Jerome.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I couldn't talk her into it, so I was kind of glad she hung around. I'll be honest. I lived through it, and it just made me tougher, and I was able to. To make a pretty good living at the sport. It's been good to me when I look around and see, you know, everything that's here today. It all comes from the love of the sport. I mean, everything I wanted to do had to do with being a cowboy. What is going on with the birds over there?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You just messed this whole shot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Keep.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I'm gonna redo it, but I could.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The birds messed the whole shot up, not me. I thought we was getting ready to get attacked.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You're like that dog that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I thought the birds was coming after us. There was so many of them.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Just stay focused.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's going to really bring a new light to what this cowboy life's really about.

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. I had, I loved racing. I loved being in, you know, the last 20 years of my life. I loved it. But it went, I was so I was busy going from the one thing to the next thing to the next thing and often overwhelmed and a little bit apprehensive about everything I was walking into. You didn't know what was on the side of the side of the next door you're going through, boy. And to your point, now I can kind of, I'm now I got enough control. I can wait. I can slow this down. I can enjoy this day. I can go see my kids, do something with them.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, that's it. That's me too, man. I'm in that same frame of mind. I'm like, am I going to retire? You know, everybody around me is like, you'll never retire. You're full of all this energy. You're the oldest teenager in town. You come coming around and I'm like, man, I don't know. I can. And I'm thinking, you know, maybe I will and spend some just. You don't retire, you just do other things.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You know, you just switch the switch gears.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How old were you when you, when you hit rock bottom? You hit, you had.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I was so, it was early. So I hit ice ice baby when I was very young. The way it goes is time wise. I did, I wrote it when I was 16, but it blew up when I was like 19 and then really big when I was around 20 and then about 23, three. I really, really hit rock bottom at 27. I almost joined the 27 Club. Yeah. And that's where I couldn't figure out. And I feel like a lot of people out in the world are really confused around that age.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that's because that's, I think that's where you turn into an adult from being like a semi adult. You're not, you're kind of a teenager, but you're 276 and you hit that 27. There's a big confusion in these kids today and they don't know and they don't have answers for their future and very stressful to them and turn to drugs.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Ready to grow up.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They're not ready to grow up, accept responsibility maybe and be a lousy adult. And I don't blame them. But you know, you got to do it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What, what kept you being, being as successful as you were at 20 years old, 21 years old. What saved you or what, what prevented that from happening sooner? Because I mean you're imagine. I don't know, I've never. But I imagine all of that stuff was accessible everywh around you. All the pitfalls, all the dangers of success and fame were all around you

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

once you hit that rock star thing, all the stuff you, you never knew it was around you and offered and given and everything. And I was using it as escape route. So that's the weekend I last that lasted three years.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But how come that didn't happen when you were 21? What was. Were there some things that were safeguarding you? Some guardrails?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

No, I think I was too busy. I think they kept me so busy busy there wasn't a minute to breathe and I'd had one event to the next event to the next event and I didn't know where life was going. Couldn't, couldn't keep the schedule in my head long enough to remember all of it. And I just let them kind of I turned into a puppet and they just tell me where to go. And I was just like the orchestra and somebody was just sitting back going, la, la, la. Kind of like Colonel and Elvis. You know, you do this, you go there, you play here tomorrow, I watch my bank account go. And I'm like, okay, this is working out, I guess. I don't know, Just keep dancing. Every day it's. You just sing and dancing and dancing and dancing and dance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So you often said. And I've read it in the notes here, and I've read, I've seen you say this where you felt like you weren't the you. You had kind of been cast into a role that truly wasn't who you were. What, what, what exactly? Who were you really? What was the, what was the person say from that? You know, when you blew up? Maybe who was the person that we didn't get to see?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Rob. So Rob is always here and Rob is Vanilla Ice. But I had to separate that. That was the part where I was telling Bieber, you know, story. So basically I found out that everything I do on the entertainment side, I didn't know this, and this is how I figured out how to rescue myself, is that everything on the entertainment side is artificial. So it took my kids, my kids to straighten me up. They, you know, they see dad and you got to explain to them, when our dad leaves the door, it's just artificial out there. If you see about it in the tabloids, if you see it on the news, that's all just whatever, artificial stuff. And then I come home and I'm just, dad, yeah, let's go play in the backyard. Let's go have fun, whatever, you know. And they keep you grounded, they keep you, give you a purpose other than yourself. And that right there is more motivation to straighten up and fly straight and do great and start reframing your brain and kind of reprogramming yourself. That's what it takes. You have to reprogram yourself.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you had a moment where you had to be rest, you had to be resuscitated. And you credited sort of that moment as for your awakening. Like you woke up and said, oh yeah, yeah, I'm done with this.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh yeah, it's been a long time. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do anything, man, nothing like crazy stuff and it never will happen. I don't associate with that stuff or anybody.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Was it literally the near death experience that made you say, man, I'm Ready to get on the other. Yeah, it scared you straight, man.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I had a moment that I wanted to go out with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. Didn't give a damn about any money. Yep. Money could never buy me happiness. I had a. Because I was so confused with the drugs and your brain don't think right. You turn into almost like a zombie and you confuse yourself. You complicate things for yourself and you'll exaggerate how bad things in life are. They're really not as bad as you're making them out to be because you're in zombieland. And I didn't know this. I never. When I came up, I never did anything. I went to the keg parties. Never drink. They knew it because I had my dirt bike in the back of the truck. I told you I couldn't drink. I had to go be at the race at 5am and perform and win, man. I'm not. You can't drink the night before at the keg party. But I had to go to the keg party because the girls were there. But I'm leaving early now because of what I told you my story. Commitment. And I had to commit. And people knew it. They were like, don't offer him a drink. He don't drink. He just doesn't do that. And then all of a sudden I hit big as a rock star. And I got all the worst influence people around me. And I'm thinking this is escape from reality for me. Let me just do this. And it was started with a little ecstasy stuff. And I can say it with a smile now because we're talking 30 something years ago, right. So I'm good. But it almost killed me, man. It led to self destruction. And what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, man. And I, I have definitely rebuilt myself. And you know, there's people around me and certain things that I kind of. That helped me along the way and orchestrated and my kids are number one motocross racing. I went back to that, got back to it, got back to motocross.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And you started racing jet skis and jets. You were top 10 in the world.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yep. At one point by leaving the race and I was lost, man. I had to get back into it and I had. I'm a racer and I love racing, man. I gotta win. I'm like, that's Travis Pastrana, one of my good friends, man. I'm like, I'm super competitive like Jordan and like I want to win. Yeah, of course it's fun, man. I grew up that way?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I race my daughter every day. You want to race to the bed? First one wins. Mark said, go, yeah, it's just something we do. You grow up that way and it's fun.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All through all of this, even after you went back to racing, you continued to make records, continue to release records, continue to go. Like, I would wonder if, because you would take a break from music, you'd say, all right, I'm gonna take a break from this. I toured a lot last year. I'm gonna stop for a minute. What makes you. I mean, I would say that if you're having fun racing jet skis or dirt bikes or being a family man, flipping houses, which I want to talk to you about shortly. Why would you want to go back to music fans?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

The fans, man. They kept asking fans. They keep asking. And I got so many out there, man, and I love them. I know that they. I wouldn't be anything without them. And it's, you know, to cater to them is what I do. And I have a line that says, never cater to a hater. Just say later and cater to the fans that appreciate you, you know, because there's of a lot, a lot of them. And I just felt like, you know what? I owe them something.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I think they. And they're calling for me, and I think they want to relive the greatest decade ever. The last of the great decades before computers ruin the world, man. And I'm so. I miss it. And I know that my kids try to explain it to my kids. I got a 28 year old and 27. I'm like, listen, I'm sorry. We had it better. We really did. And this isn't old guy talking. We really did. And these computers have taken this world and slammed it and turned it around and put it in a big snow globe and shaking it up. And I. I feel sorry for them. You remember, like, the passion we had for just shining up a car, your first car, even if it's a piece of. I'm proud. This is mine.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I got freedom.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They don't have that passion no more.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, they don't.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They don't get to go meet on the corner and do a thousand U turns trying to look for chicks or kids. I.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

There's kids Today, they turn 16 and they do not sprint to get their driver's license. I'm like, no, some of them don't even care.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They don't care. We got Uber. We got anything. We got people to take us.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Your driver's license. I might get it next year.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They don't want to leave the house. They want to sit and play Fortnite all day and meet people on Fortnite and TikTok or whatever. And we socialize. Getting out of the house, I could

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

not wait to get my driver's license, man, I can't believe that. That's not like we got trouble for

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

not coming home on time. And these kids can't even leave the house. It's like, get out of here. She goes, dad, what am I going to do? I go, climb a tree. She goes, climb a tree? Really? At my age? I go, yeah, try it. She tried it. She loved it. She goes, dad, I actually liked it. You really climbed a tree? She's like, yeah. And she liked it. See, things you can do, Just walk out the door. It'll come to you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Hey, this is Dalenhardt Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. Download gear, including the I'm old, drink some beer T shirt we've been talking about here around the office, head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merchants.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

so the I don't know man. It was probably about 2011, I guess, when you were on TV flipping houses or remodeling houses. I had no idea.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So the season started, I think, in 2010 or 11.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

10 or 11.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yep.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I turn on my television and there you are remodeling this house in Florida. And I'll be honest, like, I had. I'd met you, you know, briefly in a couple of places and it always, you know, obviously, you know, Vanilla Ice, your, your badass. It's.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Thank you, brother.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's awesome to, to get a chance to say hey to you anytime.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Same to you, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

But there I, I didn't know, you know, you and I see you on this show and I'm like, man, this, this dude is. He enjoys this. Yeah. And he knows this. You're creative. Me and my wife watched it and we were just talking about it this morning and I was like, you remember how good he was at doing that? And he knows all. He's in there doing the work. You kind of in a weird way inspired me and my wife to remodel a home on television as well. Which we would have never probably.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's right. I remember.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We would have probably never done that. That's right.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I forgot.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yes, you did.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I watched it. It was great.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I turned your zone right and I'm like, this is. I'm gonna watch this. So I'm watching it and you're talking about how much success you're having, how much fun you're having. You got all your boys around you working and helping and, and I was just impressed, man, because not a lot of people would. Would. Not a lot of people, not, not many at all would do. Would experience what you experience with your musical success, Right. And go through the down times, the tough times, and come out the other end with it with a. A good attitude to a work ethic, to go do something completely out of the norm. Right. So to see you in that space was. Was shocking. But to also see you thriving and like, hey, yeah. How your. To your point, how you were able to separate yourself from what wasn't reality, to be you and go do something completely different was just motivating. And I'm wondering, you know, I guess, you know, you've talked about all of the success you had in real estate. Yeah. So explain that. How do you get into that? How did that fall into your life?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Didn't plan it at all. Could never have said, hey, in 20 years after my record, I'm going to start doing this. Just never. So what happened is I. My. I got hit. We got hit by Hurricane Andrew. I lived on Star island, okay? Hurricane Andrew is one of the biggest category fives to ever hit anywhere. And it. I was right on Star island, right? First hit, you know, so it really destroyed my house completely. And I just finished building it and wrote the last check to the designers, walked around with the designers, looked at what they did, everything, and maybe two, three months later, the hurricane ripped the roof off and just two feet of water through my house. All my plaques are floating in there and just ripped my windows, doors, everything. Shredded it, right. Instead of hiring them again, I just paid them. I said, I'm just going to do it myself. And I did it. And it took me forever because it's slow and I'm ocd, so I have to not change that color. No, don't like that one. Change that color, too. I'm ocd, so it's. And I developed a weird passion in a weird way that I never saw coming, that I actually finished it and go, wow, this was awesome. I actually enjoyed that, right? And then at the same time, I had bought all these houses around the country that I had never seen, and I thought I had lost millions of dollars just by buying these houses that I had never seen. And I'm like, that was stupid. There's just cobwebs. I didn't rent them out. I didn't do anything. They just sit there. Years and years go by. I'm on tour, never even forgot I had them, really. Piece of paper and a filing. I still have homes. I forget I got. And they just marinate. But. But the truth is, I go, whoa, that was a waste. I'm a dumb rock star. I probably just lost all that money, and let's just sell them. And I ended up making millions when I sold them. I didn't even change the paint or nothing. And I was like, you can make money that easy in real estate. And then I got the passion for the design end, and I'm like, let's go buy some more. Let's go buy a bunch more homes and let's start doing this and. And I can design them. I like this. And that's kind of how it developed. I didn't plan it, but the hurricane helped me motivate myself to do that. And then about 19 years ago, I went to design school and I actually got a degree because I had to go to all these seminars and I read all these books on how to really be successful in real estate.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that's where I just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper, and I just kept smelling the money in every single aspect of it. And I was like, this is fun. And. And I'm getting money for it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I said, let's just keep going. And I worked my way up from the smaller homes to the multi millions. And I don't know if you know Palm beach very well, but it's in the 20 Millions ranges, and they're all over the place. And I'm up in that range now, and me and my boy Wes over there are building all these crazy things. We showcase turntables and ladies shoe rotisseries. And nobody else does that on tv because we're in Palm Beach. We don't really have a ceiling. There is no like, oh, you better check the comps down the street. I'm like, what comps? It's $30 million house next door. But I learned how to buy these homes. Allow me to do that to actually comp. And what happened is I learned how to buy tax liens. And when you can buy tax liens, that's what. Where everybody would. Because it's pennies on the dollar. So basically a $4 million house you pick up for 2 million or half or less. And that's what I was doing, and I'm still doing that. And it's basically just getting a lawyer to go to the courthouse and coming out with all the tax liens of the day. And then you go to the auctions and you bid on them and you win. And I started buying homes out of India because in 08, that housing crunch hit, and India bought all the mom and pop bank loans that all foreclosed and short sale on.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Wow.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And they bought everything in a bulk, and then they resold it to Americans. Nobody knows this. I knew this. So at 3am I got a cup of coffee, I'm out there with a laptop, and every time you hit the, the button, your enter button, it's $10,000 increment. So I'm bidding on these houses, and I learned how to win every one of them. And I can get them for pennies on the dollar. I'm gonna tell you my secret. So I go into India. You have to show proof of funds, and you enter this auction. You're in the auction, 3am, coffee's happening. You let that thing time down to the last 10 seconds. You just barely hit it to see if anybody's awake. And every time you hit it, somebody's going, oh, I'll hit mine back. And now I'm the, I'm the leader of this auction. And you let them feel, and you see them going back and forth, and you just watch it. And I'm American, man. I grew up playing video games. And when that thing hits 10 seconds. Did I win?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, my God, I won.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Every time I win the first, first three, I go, oh, I better hit it. Better hit it all slow. Lost everyone. I go, man, I'm just gonna. I don't even know how much I paid, but I know it's under the, you know, appraised value. So I buy homes for way below the appraised value, and that allows you to do whatever you want to them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That gives you a lot, lot of room.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I can turn around and sell them and make money just like they are. Yeah. Which is why I sit on a lot of properties. You know, people don't understand why I sit on it and don't see it, because I've never seen it. My. The way it works is I don't care to see it. Yeah. It's all I need to know location. All I do is have my attorney that goes to the courthouse. He gives me the auction, I buy the property. I've had property 30 something years, you know, that I've never seen it. Never even went over there. And I don't care. Some of the houses I own have snakes coming out of them and cockroaches and falling apart, collapsing, and they're worth millions. You know why? Because I bought them so low and I don't do anything with them. They're just sitting there marinating. Because I bought them on an appraised value. All I needed to know was the auction is here. It says you can buy this Land, you know, acreage or whatever for 700 grand. And it appraises right there at $3 million. I'll take it. I don't know why, but I take them and I get all this land, and it's just sitting there, and that's how you accumulate it. It. And the kids can have it. I'll never sell it. Yeah. All my cars. Speaking of cars, I got to talk about your daddy's car. I got your daddy's car. But that. That's how the real estate worked for me. And I just kept learning and learning and going, this is freaking awesome, man. And I enjoy it. This is passion.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I can make, and it's art. And music was art, too, so it's the same kind of artistic thing.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And you can go, wow, I did that. And I used to get letters and people coming up to me in airports. Even the houses I sell, they say, I'm going to renew my vows with my husband. This is the perfect house. I don't want to change anything. I love it. We're gonna stay here. You know how good that makes you feel? That every color choice you made and tiles and everything that you've done, they love and they're gonna change anything. And they write you a note like that. Yeah. It's like, this is rewarding. So I was like, man, I really starting to love this stuff. And then I got the call for the TV show, because one question.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How did that find out? How did they learn?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I didn't want it? So I got. I did the behind the music on VH1. You remember that? And the guy who produced that was Matt Levine out of New York. And he called me up out of the random. He goes, wow. Hey, Rob, you answered. I go, yeah, I haven' you in years. This is Matt Levine. I said, hey, Matt. And he goes, I saw on Forbes. On Forbes, they had a segment on me. They did an interview, and then on Forbes, they said how. The question was funny. It says, how did you not end up like MC Hammer?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I know. That's my next question.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And he go. And they go, well, I went into real estate, and that was on Forbes. They picked it up, and he's called me up, and he says, listen, would you like to do a TV show? And I go, no. He goes, why not? I said, because I don't want people to see me like that. That I don't want him to see me all normal. And it's just not. I think I need to hide behind my music. Like Prince. Prince, you know, He's a mystery. You don't know how he lives. You don't where he lives. Does he ride dirt bikes? What does he do? You don't know. And I'm thinking, I don't want people to see me so normal and swinging a hammer with a tool. I don't think that's cool. Nobody will care. This will tank. I don't want it. And he goes, just. We're just gonna film you, let you do what you want. I said, all right, whatever, man. This is gonna tank. I didn't know. And then we're 10 seasons, and we just signed to HBO a month ago, and we're on HBO now. We got two new seasons. Yeah, yeah, we got 12 now. 12. We had nine with. With the network, and now we just signed to HBO. We got. And it's amazing that many years since 10, and now we. We didn't think we'd even get a second season. Yeah. So for me, it's like, it motivates you. People talking to you. It makes you go, what am I gonna do for the next one? So when you see my show, it just elevates. And that's why you see, like, God, how can I top that D? Look what we did. And I go, we got to put a rotisserie for cars in. What's that? Oh, it's where it spins, and you don't have to do a U turning, drive in the garage and go out, and you have to back up in a little driveway, and it's just cool. And you can put your Ferrari on it. Okay, we got to do rotisseries because we have 70% women watching our show. We got to cater to them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

This ain't a bunch of construction men. We need floral print in the carpet. We need a cascading waterfall going down to a tub for a lady to sit in. A man will never use it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And then I saw the ratings go, so if you see these bedrooms in these bathrooms, I mean, I do, you know, 2,000 square foot bathroom.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Right.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Just for the women. Because I know that they're watching, and they're like, honey, at home.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

All my friends get in trouble. They don't even have a toolkit. And they're like, bro, we tore it up really easily, but now we can't put it back together. And I'm like, yeah, the demo is the easy part. It's, you know, you see us running through walls on tv, but it's. When you got to put it back together, everyone leaves. They're, like, scratching their Head.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that's it, man. We started catering to the women, and you can see all these great things. Instead of just like a normal kitchen or a renovation, you'll see these crazy things that just helped the ratings blow through the roof. We have over 100 million viewers, and I just couldn't believe it. And I'm just so. It kept fueling me to get, you know, get something new in the house that I can keep coming up with.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's badass.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that's where we are today, man. I'm honored that they still got it and they still wanted the, you know, see the Vanilla Ice project.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. I think it was the. I think people love a good comeback, you know, And I think that's what it was.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

But if the house is sucked. Suck.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Like when you. When I saw you on the first show I saw, I wasn't. I mean, Amy's looking at the design choices, but I'm watching you. Yeah. And I'm like, damn, look at this guy, man. He's me. This is a comeback. This is. That's what America's all about. Right? Everybody loves a good redemption story. And, you know, so I think it was just cool to see you thriving.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Thank you, bro.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And, yeah, and I'm glad the show's done well. It's fun to watch. And. And, you know. You know, it's not like you're in a place. It's not like you're. You're faking it. You know, what you're.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, I've seen those shows out there. I watch them. You can tell right away when they got a tool belt on and there's no tools in it. I was like, what has he got as a prop?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So when I reading the notes and I saw this as well in some old stuff, you know, you. You saying that you had all these houses and that you had all this fortune and that you had all this money in the bank when you hit rock bottom. So you had. But you had also signed away some of the. Some of the rights to your music. Right. In multiple situations. Right. And you had. You had the. You know, I don't know what the. What. What ended up being the settlement on. On the. The deal with. With Queen and them. So, I mean, you know, you had. You. You created this music. It was popular, but you ended up at some points in different times, having to give away some of the rights to some of it. So where did your fortune come from? Was it still that successful that you still were able to enjoy the. You Know the fruits of the labor or did you continue, you know, aside, take ice, ice maybe off the table? Did you make your fortune with the rest of the work you did?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I have completely crushed it in real estate, like beyond what you could imagine. Like beyond even the ice, ice, baby. It's unreal, really. Real estate, you can print your own money. You know that, man, you hear the stories. People gotta have a place to live. You know how I've, I. You know who's an amazing calculative guy is one of the greatest investors of in the world, Warren Buffett. And he can calculate numbers real quick. And it's very simple. And I listened to one interview he did when everybody thought he was crazy. And they said, and it was 09, after the housing crunch went down, the trains, so it was, I think, Pacific railroad train all across the country. He bought it and his investment team said, you shouldn't buy this. It's losing a billion dollars a year. You don't want a tank with it, Let it turn around and then buy it one of the way up. He's like, nah, this is simple for me. I'm gonna buy it right now when it's at rock bottom. Because I calculated and the world when I was born had less than 1.8 billion. And I'm still alive and I'm at 8 point something billion. Now he calculated, he goes, people need goods, they need places to live and they need it. And these trains are going to be very valuable. And sure enough, he turned out to be the greatest investor of all time. The trains make billions of dollars, and it's been one of the greatest investments for him. And he owns all the trains.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I mean, I realized like, you know, no matter what, you hold on to any house 10 years, even if you would have bought one in 08 when everybody bailed out and they said, foreclosure, short sale, we got to go. Just like our neighborhood. If you would have just stayed and paid and sold your house in 18, 10 years, you would have made money, a ton of it, and just paid your mortgage, you should have never bailed. Now you're bankrupt, you're living in Renton. It's just a matter of this. Use your brain, man. And if you could just use it a little bit and stop looking through the windshield wipers and get you one of these opportunities. Just look at it one time. That's an opportunity, and that's how many that pass you by. One opportunity, and I take it, man, and you got to run with it with it. That's how you turn dreams that never develop in anything into reality. Yeah, and I know you got to commit.

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I saw you your car collection. Let's talk about it. So what's. You have a car that Dad, I only got two cars way back in the day. Yeah, you only got two cars.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

No, I only got two cars we need to talk about. Okay, let's go. No, I got cars. Cars we can talk about. I got celebrity cars that are cool, but only one celebrity car that I want to talk to you, and that's your daddy's car. I mean, I still got my 5.0 Mustang.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You do?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Which is your very first one. Yeah. Still got that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's awesome. I think people appreciate you.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Still gives me a boner when I drive it. But. But, but the. But the. Your daddy's car. This is how I learned about you and your dad and the whole story. It's, you know, the. It's one of the most amazing stories ever written with any racing of any form of anything at all. You know, from Ferrari to fit of Paul. These. To all your stories of these famous racers and schumachers and everybody. There is no bigger name your dad has taken on in you of this race life. Another like Elvis, man. It's like Elvis, man. It is. It is. You are America's heartbeat beat, dude, and we love you. I got goosebumps thinking about it, man. And I'm just excited as you me coming here for it to see you. And by the way, we got to get a picture because I'm hanging it up.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

In the museum next to the car, man. I told Wes on the way here, but I got your dad's car, man, that he first. His first race car that he raced a V8 in. Yeah. And that's the Saturday night special.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that was made by Ruth Geb. And Ruth geb tried out three guys racers back then, and he pulled your dad because he was badass at circle track dirt racing, racing six cylinders. And they pulled him out of there, and they said, let me test you out in this new form of racing, this endurance race. And not only did he have the fastest lap time by far, he didn't burn up the brakes. He didn't blow up the engine. He didn't. He brought it in with finesse, and that's what they were looking for. And that was the start of his career. And I'm like, God, man. And I read every story and dissected it about that, and. And I know that number two car and I know that number three car in every development of every evolution along the way. And I find it more fascinating, the stuff that's not so out there, that's the early, early parts.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You know what I'm saying?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And that. I just. I don't know. Me and Wes and my boys, we can sit around there and talk about it. Wes called me one night, and he goes, bro, you got to go down there. I said, I'm asleep. He goes, bro, go down there. I have, you know, go down to the museum. I said, okay. Got me out of bed, literally. Because he read a story all night long on that car. He says he had a paperclip clip, and that paperclip would go. He peeled it open so it was long, and it would go down his race suit, and he would pull it out, and he had a little bitty pinhole right above the steering wheel. I didn't believe it was there. And it. And you could see it all scribbled up. Around it. I had to get the phone out and zoom in and look at it. And then there is a little hole there. And I guess it advanced the timing or something a little bit by doing something there.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And. And it's in the story of the car, the history of it, and it came with it. So I'm just the. It was cool and I didn't believe him. And he had me out there in my robe looking up and I was like, damn, bro, it is there. This is cool. So we find out little things with that car and things they did just to win and, and get ahead and. And I even remember story about your, your dad borrowing some friend's car and his dad got mad, he went out and raced it and tore it up or something, brought it back. There's so many cool stories. Oh yeah. That are. You don't need a phone, you don't need anything. You can just sit down and tell front porch stories all day long.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And what a great American heroic story to, you know, to be a part of.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

This great country we live in.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Absolutely.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I mean, the Earnhardt name is Elvis Presley right up there with it, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I would agree that Dad's, Dad's. It's crazy, man.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Just dad, brother, it's you, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, that story with you though, and

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

how heart touching it is watching you grow up with him. Yeah, bro. I'm honored to be here with you, man, in the same room with you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I appreciate that.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So the car that you have was a Dodge kit car.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I met your sister today, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

God, she looked just like your dad. I was like the eyes in the face and I'm like, oh, my God. I didn't know what to say, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

She does.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Sorry to cut you off.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

No, it's fine. He, he drove that car at dirt track around here, not too far from here, Concord Speedway. They were, the, the, the Petties and Dodge were trying to put together a kit car program that a racer could buy this car and it would come to the racer and they could be able to build it themselves and a lot. It was actually kind of successful for about four or five years, the kit car program. And they wanted, they wanted, they were going to test this car, Concord, and they wanted Ralph Earnhardt to do it. But Ralph was busy and he suggested dad. And to your point, dad had been running the modified division or the six cylinder division at Concord. And so he goes out and shows up to test this car and did really well. And it kind of, it kind of was the it kind of was an important moment because it. The people that were working on that car had some connections, and it would. They would go back and say, man, Ralph's son's pretty decent. Like, we should kind of keep our eye on him. And that was. I think Ralph did that on purpose. Like, yeah, I can't do it.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Plant the seed.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Dale to do it. And it ended up being a kind of the genesis or the beginning of his. His career. But he'd only been racing for a couple years, really, because I think this happened to 73 or 72.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

3. Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So pretty neat deal. I've seen you on TV talking about that car, that blue.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You did? You saw it? I hope you've seen it, man. That's so cool, brother. That's an honor, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What other car you got?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

My buddy Donnie, that works with me, is my master carpenter. I came in there one time. He goes, do you mind if I go see that car? I said, go ahead, brother. I said, where's Donnie, man? We've been outside. I said, where is he, man? He's still in there. There. He's still in. He walked in there with Six Pack. Yeah, Six Pack was finished. I sit there and I looked at him. I walked in as Donnie, you all right? Turned around, he was in tears. I said, what is going on, man? He goes, I'm having a moment with this car. The NASCAR nut, old redneck from Carolina. Just badass dude. Carpenter. Badass carpenter. You see him on the show with me. Build anything.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

He is huge. Huge. Earn, harder, everything fan, nascar. And he was just sitting there, having a moment, and I was like. I realized what that car can do to a person by just feeling it. The energy.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I have a seat, too. I didn't. I don't even know if you knew that. So he was kind of narrow back then. I can't even fit in it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Skinny.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

He was skinny, dude. He was young back then, but he was a little skinny. And he got in there. I can't even fit in it. We had to remove that seat, and I set it up, and I got it in a museum, and I even kept the little liner that went.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Keep saying museum. What kind of museum you got?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I got a car museum. A Ninja Turtle museum. Cars. And. Yeah, at 31 cars.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, 31 cars.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah. It's fun. I get a lot more. I bought three the other day.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Really?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I'm getting old trucks, man. I'm getting in the old crew cab truck, 70s for. Okay.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Forge. Yeah. I got into the square body chevys yeah. Late 70s, early 80s are badass, man.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Square bodies. Yes, obs. That's the way to go. Forget the airbags.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

They've gotten big, man. You could get a square body, like a 77 or an 85. Square body body. You could get those cheap like 10 years ago, man.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

They've through the roof now.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's ridiculous.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Especially after they've announced eye recognition coming out in the new super duties. But they do have an 8 liter. But I mean, they got all these new cars coming out with eye recognition, no driving, lane changing. And nobody wants that. I don't know why they're wasting time and money on it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, I know. So you're still. You're still doing real estate? Oh, yeah. How. What does that operation look like?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I basically pick and choose. I'm building a brewery right now, the Vanilla Ice Brewery downtown. So you guys, if you, you know, get a chance to come over and go to that. That's Vanilla Ice Brewery. Got forest. I got about the old Masonic Temple. Yeah. So it's got four floors and we're filming it. So that'll be out there. You'll be seeing that. We just finished two seasons of Vanilla Ice Project in St. Augustine, Florida, where we do a lot of history, too. Because that. There's a lot of history there. We showcase a lot of that. That the fort and the cool stuff in the history of America and Florida. And two houses we built on the beach on A1A Beachfront Avenue, ironically. And on this intro of this one, I'm driving down the beach, a 1A in my 5.0. And I don't pull it out for nothing. I don't drive my cars. I don't drive them. They just sit there. All right. And I'm driving that 5O out for this one because it's on a 1A. And I'm serious, I had a boner, man. I'm driving that thing down and I'm pulling in. I'm like, I'm on a 1A. I feel like this is 19, 1889, and I'm on a 1A. And I had a moment, you know, like Donnie had with this car. And I'm in my 5 0. And it was just ironic, but we used that footage for the show. So that's the opening of the show. And I get out with a tool belt on.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How many houses are you working on at once?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So right now I've probably got three, four I'm doing right now. But when you do bigger ones, you do less of them. When you do smaller ones, you do more of them. And a lot of them. I don't do spec homes anymore. I don't do them for clients anymore. I just do them for myself and then I sell them, you know. But I've just gotten really good at it, and I don't like to spread myself too thin. But for a lot of my friends, they want. I have them backed up and they wait for me. I need that turntable. I put in these special elevators. They're pneumatic, so it's like the bank teller, they want those. I got them lined up, so you have to wait for me. And they go, we'll wait, we'll wait. I need those garage doors. So everything they see I do on the show, all my friends that they want, they want it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so will you come. You send your boys over?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Send my boys over? Only for my friends, man. I get them all. They got all the fancy garage doors and cool car lifts.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Are you. Are you moving from house to house, just kind of checking in on progress. Are you. Are you physically still, like, as we see on the show? Are you at the house doing some of the physical work?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, I do a little of the physical work because it's fun, you know, and I like to get out there and mix up with boys and you can actually get a better sense of what's going on and how. How the finish line's looking and everything comes in.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

More focus when you're not traveling and doing, you know, travel.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I travel.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Traveling a bunch.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh, yeah. I do the I love the 90s tour.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

That's right. Tell me about that.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So the I love the 90s tour is me. You got Salt and Pepper Tone Loke.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Young mc, Color Me Bad, Naughty by Nature. Yep. Montel Jordan started. It's been going for eight years. We haven't stopped, so we go about eight months.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I thought this was a new thing.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Thing. I started this tour because I thought like a dj, and I'm like, you know, let's put this together and put all the songs that you would hear at a wedding today so that everybody can dance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Take me to a show. Say, I'm going to go to a show. When's it start? How long does it last? How many headline acts are there or whatever?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, all of that I just said. And that's the I love the 90s tour day. Yeah, like, no, it. It's four hours and it's the most awesome. You can't sit down. Everybody's a teenager. You'll recognize every song.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

How Long is each. Each person sing 20 to 30 starts

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

off little shorter ones. And then as the acts go on, they get longer. And I play an hour and it's amazing, man. I mean, you'll dance like you're in a Zumba class and you'll be like, I'm a grown ass man. Go, ninja, go, ninja, go. You don't care, not for the night. You're not a grown ass man. You're a teenager in high school again and you really live in it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So that's been successful. Super.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

We're in stadiums right now. We have the highest gross alcohol sales rate of any concert going right now because there's an expendable income of people that got the babysitters at home and they are living like a teenager for the night. It's unbelievable. The success of it is really taken off. But I have to tell the network and everybody that and the, you know, booking agents. I said weekends only because on Monday I got to be my real age and I got to go into construction life and start, you know, finishing what I got going.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

When do you relax?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You know, I took a time management course. I went to Hawaii and took this. And it teaches you a lot. How do you have time for everything? Well, time management course came in and they said you need to free up your life of all these things that occupy your time that you don't even know you're doing. How many people ever wait in the line did it take over an hour to get there from start to finish? And at the end of your life, the guy that's presenting the course, he holds it up and he goes, look how many years you've wasted on your life just doing something that doesn't even pay you. What else could you do with that? Time. Time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And then they show you other things in life that you might do that you know, how much time you sit there in a car or something, just all kinds of little things that frees up time. And once you free those up, it gives you free time, more time to do the things you want to do. Real estate, if you want to be successful or go start a new business, have time to do other things that you never had time for. That's what it's all about.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You still ride bikes?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I still ride bikes. I got that electric one, the Stark Var.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh, my God, it's a rocket. Drag race any bike out there and smoke them. I told Jeremy McGrath the other day, he says, I got a 500 for you. You can come do this holeshot challenge. I said 500. Can I do it in the Stark? He goes, that wouldn't be fair. I said, you're Jeremy McGrath. He goes, that stark's fast. You know what I'm talking about? That electrical, right? Oh, my God.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

It's a game changer. They outlawed it in the. In the supercross. This. This electric bike will just destroy a KX450 like it's set in St. Hill. Huh.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So. So you're traveling around, doing concerts, you're still doing real estate. If you, if you take a vacation, where do you go?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Well, we got a vacation house in St. Augustine. A lot of the houses on the show, I don't sell them. You don't see the sell. It's not a flip house. Yeah. Show. It's just the A to B. It's zero to hero. Yeah. We show the renovation, not there's no sale. So I keep the houses, like I told you. The ten year things. Yeah. So I keep them. And I got four of them sitting in line in St. Augustine. That's where our vacation is. On the beach on A1A. And I got a dock and a boat. And we get away, no traffic, and it's just me and my little 8 year old, my wife, and we just have a good time.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

On the beach, marinating. Throw my phone away. Go back to the 90s. The best time ever.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Tell a bunch of stories, do little cookouts.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yep. What about being a dad?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Greatest thing in life.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Best accomplishment I've ever had.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

By far.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

What does she like to do?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

My daughters, all of them. They're great in different ways. I have. I have three.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Three.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah. And took on another of four. Four girls.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Four girls?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah. 28, 26, 16 and seven. We have big birthdays for the seven. She's the boss, you know. So she's. Priscilla's her name. We're huge Elvis fan.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Okay.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So we, me and mommy went to Graceland and pretty much made out in every room and took a selfie like this. I know we're in the jungle room. Kiss me. And it's like, what do we name our daughter? We're like, Priscilla. It's like, done. So it worked out. But yeah, we're geeked out on all that kind of stuff. Mommy's a car girl, which is rare to find a woman that likes cars. And I was like, this is a keeper, man. She's got cooler cars than I got. I buy her cars.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

She's got 59 Cadillac convertible. The Brits. Oh, man. Cars that are just like, whoo. And hers don't leak oil, and mine all do. I got all the engines better not legal. That's so funny.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I. I'm an Elvis fan, too. I've had a room in my house for, I don't know, 30 years, called the Elvis Room. It's the guest bedroom.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I gotta come over, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Everything in, it's Elvis. The headboard, the headboards, the cabin with the. You let people stay on the back.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's got all kinds of Elvis memorabilia in it.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Hell, yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I've been big elves. I used to go to my mama's house. Dad, you know, Dad's mom on my. On my dad's side. Yeah. And I'd go to her house when I was a little boy, she had Elvis playing all the time. She was like that little, you know, that teenager in the front row screaming.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

At the concert. She.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

We got a king.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

A Die Hard king. And so, yeah, I would always hear him. His. His music when I was little.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So I just became. And he's got some great songs. I mean, they're great songs.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

He's the greatest, man. We have a king. America's got a king. It's called Elvis. You know, just live it up. That's him. Ain't nobody. You know, there's the Prince.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Do you have. I'm sure you have some pretty cool memorabilia and stuff. You got any cool Elvis?

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I do. I wish I had more. I have a car that Dean Martin owned that I bought from Dean Martin off Hollywood Cars. And this car, Elvis, he loaned it to Elvis. And the story is, Elvis was. They were driving this car, and back then in 56. It's a Continental. It's not a Lincoln. It's Continental. Really cool car. Very expensive car. At $14,000, that was the most expensive car in the world in 1956, because every car, even the top Cadillac, was 4,000. So it was like, why would anybody buy this? So all the celebrities bought them. It's probably the most famous Elvis car photo that you see with him is that car. And I got that car, and they parked it. They had. They were driving drunk, and they parked it on the actual Vegas golf course where Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were supposedly dating. And they had an airplane flying around in surveillance trying to film it. And they didn't know they were drunk. They parked that car there. It was there for a week and a half. They forgot where they'd left it. And the groundskeeper came back and found that car and said, there's somebody's cars. Out here, and we don't know what's going on. And they found. That was Dean Martin. And that's the car I got. The Rat Pack's been in it. Marilyn Monroe's been in it. I got all these paperwork on it. And that's one of the cool cars I got. So that's kind of my Elvis closest Elvis memorabilia. My buddy Gino has his glasses, his bracelet, and he's friends with the ginger girl that was the last person dating him. And he flies to her house and. And somewhere in Tennessee and buys all this stuff that she's had for all these years. He's bought the ring, the bracelet, the glasses that say tcb. The necklace and a gun. Damn. All Elvis. I go over there and hold it, man. And it's like, kind of like when I feel like when I look at your dad's car, you know, it's that energy about it. You know, you feel the presence and that energy there. And you go, like, I just got to try them glasses on. Oh, man. And, you know, and then he shows the picture of him wearing them, and, you know, you're touching. Touching them. Yeah, it's. It's some. Makes you feel some type of way, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I agree.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Magic.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

What about you? What do you got? What do you tell me your Elvis stuff?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I. I hesitate to say this, but I've got a. I've got a framed autograph. And I don't. I mean, you never know what. That's. If that's just legit or not, but it. It's. Yeah, it's not like I'm ever gonna. You know, I don't need anybody to believe it or not believe it. It's mine.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Right.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It's whatever, man. It means something to me. But some. The person that gave it to me swears up and down it was legit. They didn't sell it to me. They just gave it to me knowing I was a fan.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

And so I mean, that. That, to me, I'm pretty pumped about heck all. Most of the other stuff I have are like little cantinas and stuff of him.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

You know, my mama had a bunch of that stuff, and I got a few of them.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You call her your memo. That's what I call my.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

My grandma.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

My memo.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Memo.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's good one, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. So, yeah, I. So do you have, like, a plan? Do you have a vision of what, what, what the next five years and the next 10 years? Look, like I told you when you got here, you look like you're in Great shape.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I thank you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

So like I and I and we talked about not quitting, not stopping, that's for sure. So.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

But I, you know, you may not stop, but you may shift gears.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So I don't know, I try to like not think too far in the future. Everything that I've tried to think or whatever, it just went a different direction. You think you're going to do this and then all of a sudden you're building houses. Huh. You know, life can. You never know who you. Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery. You know, you never know what tomorrow's going to bring. You could meet someone, it could change your life. You know, you could get married, you could be. Or a job opportunity and you're living in a different place. So for me, I just say, you know what, I set little goals and stuff here and there, but who knows what tomorrow's going to bring day by day, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, you're. I've been seeing you a little bit on the, on the news here lately, talking about the Great American State Fair.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah. It's all over the place, man. They got me wanting to not feel proud to be an American and why am I not allowed to be proud to be an American? I feel like I should be.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And I'm a stand up for that. And I am me. And that's. I can't speak for all my other friends and whatever their reasoning behind what their choices are is theirs. I speak for myself and I feel honored, proud. And my mom thinks it's the greatest thing, you know, And I don't know why there's such a fuss. You know, when you're from the 90s like me or something, you just can't understand why everything is so seriously taken so serious today for sure. Like, I really feel sorry for these kids 30 and under because they are so ripped in every direction. Confusion wise with the social media and all the stories and the news channels trying to divide the country. Country people forget we're all one. Yeah. We all fly the same flag, man. And we can celebrate this country and we can sell it without. And as a musician and an entertainer. Yeah, we're not. I don't feel like we should be political. We're just going to celebrate turning 250. It shouldn't be that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Big of a deal, right?

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. Well, it's a big deal for the country.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's what I'm saying, man. It's just a birthday. Let's have, let's have fun.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We cannot let 250 come and go 250.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Let's go celebrate it once in a lifetime, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, I'm excited for you, man. The. Of all the bands. I gotta ask you a couple more questions. Of all the bands that you toured with, opened for, who was your favorite? Who was. Who were the coolest? Who were the. Who was the person or the group that treated you the best? Ah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

When I was opening up for them.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Anytime time. Opening up, playing with, touring with anyone.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I got a lot of great friends out there. And we just lost one Rob Base, and he was a great friend of mine for over 30 years. You know, dude, that.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

It takes two. I had to buy multiple copies of that cassette because it would start squeaking after.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

So badass. I played this and dance like crazy doing that. That was. That was the real hyper dancing, too. That was, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

The beat on that song. Yes. Had everybody.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Everybody. Big hit.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah, it was.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I got Tone Loke out there with me. He's one of my. We've been known to each other forever. He's a great dude, man.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I saw him play In Alabama, probably 2000.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Funky cold Medina.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah. The best.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Yeah, I love it. Listening to all the songs you grew up to and. And. And, you know, the ones that have passed, you know, Biz Markey and we had, you know, Tupac was a friend. We've had, you know, so many have passed ODB from the Wu Tang Clan and, you know, Shock G. So many people that I know were on. We were all together on the Ship Hop Cruise even, and they're all not with us no more. It's kind of strange, you know. And then Rob just fell off. So for me, it's like, you got to make the best of every moment and, you know, enjoy this life because it's over quick, man. You got to enjoy this.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

We closer to the finish line than start.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

You got to start thinking about that. You get wiser as you get go. And you say, I got to start enjoying this more. I mean, it's an option. And if you. If you know that you. You start leaning towards, let's go have some fun.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Let's enjoy this life. Let's go. Because smiles are contagious. And if you sit around in the sorrow and soaking in all these negative things, you'll live that life and it'll be a miserable life.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Yeah.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

And you'll never go dancing. Gotta dance.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Well, we'll keep dancing, man.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

That's it.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

I appreciate you.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

I appreciate you.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

A lot of fun.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Thank you. I appreciate you, man. And we got to get A picture. We will and appreciate you, man. That's. This is such an honor to be here and tell these stories. And I've been looking for this, Looking forward to this forever. So appreciate you, bud.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Robert Matthew Van Winkle. Hey, what a cool name.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

Not as cool as the other one.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

All right, man. That was a great interview with Rob Vanilla Ice. He probably likes to go by Rob, I suppose I didn't ask him that, but Vanilla Ice, everybody knows him as that. He's global. He was. You know, I've. I've met the guy multiple times. I grew up when his music blew up. I was a kid in school. And I'm glad he brought up Rob Bass, because It Takes Two was one of my favorite songs. I still listen to that every now and then. It's one of those one songs you know all the words to, but just a lot of fun to talk to him. Been trying to get him here for a while. We've met on multiple occasions. And I'll. I'll tell you this. I guess it was probably 2006 or so. I went. Was in Vegas, went to a club with a bunch of my buddies. He's. We talked about it. He's playing. He's playing on stage, probably about 10, 15ft away from me. And they took a break, just a little five minute break. And he come over to the table and we bull for a minute and then they called him back to the stage. And I remember that. I was like, hey, man, I remember us. I remember us being there and I remember you. I'd been drinking, but I remember us being there and I remember you playing and it was badass. And you played Ice Ice Baby, the rock version. I'd never heard it, but it was like really good. It was kind of like had a little corn vibe to it. Amy's like, y'.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

All.

[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

Amy's like, I saw a picture of y' all that night, a picture in you and him that y' all took together. And I'm like, dang, I don't remember taking a picture with him. And he goes, he says this after we got up from the table. He goes, yeah, we took a picture. You actually came and sang Ice Ice Baby on. On the stage. And I was like, I sang Ice Ice Baby on the stage at the club. He goes, yes. I'm like, oh. He goes, you were feeling pretty good, but so it's cool to get him on the stage or on the. On the show. And we talked about the Earnhardt car that he has. And. And I've been So curious about his. I'll be straight, I'll be so I've been so curious about his wealth and his real estate and how he did that. I. He's just, it's just one of those, it's one of those stories that ain't supposed to end well, man, this guy blew up. Whether you, whether he ended up getting taken advantage of or whatever, he ended up getting messed up on drugs and got in a really, really bad spot, almost died. And sometimes you can come out of that and just at least exist, you know, and have somewhat of a productive life, but not a lot of people do. And not only did he, not only did he exist, he became richer than he'd ever dream of becoming through his hard work in real estate and the studying. You know, he talked about going to, going and doing and learning. Yeah, this guy, you gotta understand, he's. He's got this, he's recognizable no matter where he goes and what he does. He had to at some point realize, like, if I go out there and do this, if I extend myself, go into real estate, go into these classrooms and learn, everybody in there is gonna want to know about ice. Ice baby. They're. Everybody, everybody meet is going to tell him about this when they heard it, what they thought about it. And it's got to be exhausting. But he didn't, he kept. He just found, you know, he was motivated by the, by the financial success or rewards on the other end. And damn it, dude, he just did it. And he's now very successful. Yeah, I don't even understand it. I don't even know if I'd have the guts to cast the line, you know, like he did. He cast the line and he bait the hook, cast the line and reeled into all these big fish and now he's doing amazing and still gets to go singing songs for people that love to hear them. So he still gets the dance, get on stage, get that adrenaline rush that he got as an entertainer. Pretty cool. So thanks for him coming through. This episode is presented by Arby's new meat and three box. Get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats and we'll see you tomorrow. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook X and Tick Tock.

[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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[Rob Van Winkle (Vanilla Ice)]

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[Dale Earnhardt Jr.]

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