I’ll never forget the day I first heard Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”. I was enraged. Angry. Overwhelmingly pissed off. Ok, I may have slightly over reacted.

The bass riff in the sounded almost exactly like the bass riff in Queen’s “Under Pressure”, one of my favourite Queen tracks.

I then heard Vanilla in an interview say that the riff wasn’t the same because there was an extra little bit at the end of the riff. Well, yes, that’s true, there is an extra little but at the end, however it’s clear that 90% of the riff was ripped off by Mr Ice.

Here he is trying to explain himself:

 

Back in 1990 when the song was released, Queen took V. Ice to court for copyright infringement. It was reported that Queen and V. Ice came to an undisclosed out of court settlement. I rejoiced hearing this, knowing that he had suffered a financial penalty for plagiarism.

However, years later Mr Caramel Ice (oops, Vanilla) explained what actually happened:

He explained here that rather than have to pay royalties to Queen every time “Ice Ice Baby” was played or used for commercials, etc, it was cheaper for him to purchase the publishing rights to “Under Pressure” which he claims cost him $4 million at the time and was a “great investment”.

Great investment indeed!! Have a look at the interview above where he explains all of this. He actually seems like a fairly nice guy.  Never thought i’d say that, maybe i’m mellowing in my old age!

Lots of Love!

Gareth