His music career may have thawed out, but Vanilla Ice is now following his other cool passion — remodeling homes.
Instead of selling albums, the rapper is now selling houses on his new reality show, “The Vanilla Ice Project.”
For the past 15 years, Vanilla Ice has been renovating homes to increase their real estate value, a practice called “flipping.”
Now he’s sharing his house–flipping secrets with viewers on his new show on the Do–it–Yourself network. Appealing to a whole different kind of audience from his rap music fans, Ice demonstrates how to save thousands of dollars in home renovation.
The rapper has not exactly lived up to the former glory of “Ice, Ice, Baby,” releasing a few, not–so–hot albums and appearing on VH1’s “The Surreal Life” (spelling virtual celeb-ankruptcy) since his single topped 1990s charts.
But at the beginning of every “Project,” episode, Ice reminds viewers of his past success, making sure to mention his album, “To The Extreme,” released in 1990, was the fastest selling hip–hop record of all time and, according to him, “still is.”
In his latest fix–it challenge, Rob Van Winkle — yes, it’s hard to believe his real name is worse than his stage one–takes on a 3–year–old in–ground pool.
Although he’s obviously very adamant about his remodeling work, it’s difficult to take the tattooed, baseball–cap wearing rapper seriously, especially when “bling” is the every other word out of his mouth. It didn’t help that he randomly left his task in the middle of the episode to ride his Jet Ski.
Ice did offer his viewers additional information while cleaning the pool, but the hesitant manner in which he spoke and seeming struggle to pronounce words made it appear like he was trying to sound smarter than he actually is, which came off less funny and endearing and more frustrating.
Like this gem: “That’s raccoon poop, they carry encephalitis — all kinds of bacterial diseases and stuff, they have a very strong immune system but the stuff that they carry would kill most humans.”
The rapper’s fragmented words, along with his reluctance to make eye contact with the camera and awkward laughing at his own “jokes,” proved he’s not yet ready to star in his own TV show.
Besides the humor of Ice trying to act seriously, the show had no hint of entertainment.
The most exciting part of the episode, sadly, was when it started raining — the suspense was unbearable as the water threatened to undo the work they did installing the pavers.
Other than the thrill of Mother Nature, the half hour of four middle–aged men cleaning a pool was painfully slow. 
No matter how tedious the episode was or how easy it was to make fun of Ice and his crew, they did get the job done, and quite impressively.
They successfully removed the stagnant water, built the fire pit and lit the tiki torches around the new, refurbished pool.
The finished product was surprisingly classy.
Ice couldn’t help beaming about bringing the newly–renovated pool “back to life.” If only he could say the same for his rap career.