newmantonnesen1419

In the winter of 1987-88, or maybe the following summer ? the exact dates have dissolved into a haze of hair spray and a tinnitus caused by long-gone 808 claps. It was the height of hip-hop’s first Golden Age, and in South Dallas a kid nicknamed Vanilla discovered an alternate reality. In those pre-internet days, the hip-hop world was an underground subculture accessible only through hard-to-find 12-inches and “How do you do, fellow kids” trend reports on the local TV stations. The kid made $40 a day breakdancing, beatboxing, and freestyling over Mantronix beats at local malls ? a form of hip-hop busking that was exotic to well-heeled Dallasites buying loafers at Neiman Marcus.

https://onevanilla.io/ was the hip-hop equivalent of Jim Carrey’s Ripley ? a nutty and gifted eccentric who embodied the F. Scott Fitzgerald cliche about second acts. He rebranded himself multiple times and parlayed his severance from the music industry into a career flipping houses on The Vanilla Ice Project, but he couldn’t shake the shadow of that first pristine wave.

Even before "Ice Ice Baby" became a cultural pinata, hip-hop critics were gleefully dissecting him ? the reigning dean of music critics, Robert Christgau, eviscerated him for being somehow “blander than Hammer,” a pathetic attempt at rhyming bluster that was “just plain silly.” And yet despite the vicious assault, the fact remains that Vanilla Ice was still a competent rapper. His debut album, To the Extreme, is a funky display of lyrical bluster worthy of the mighty LL Cool J, and his follow-up, I’m a Legend, is a solid replacement-level 1990 rap record.

The problem is, it’s hard to know what to believe about Vanilla Ice. The story is a veritable Rashomon, a white rap version of Bebop and Rocksteady if that bebop had been a gangster band. And no matter how many indignant essays and sneering diatribes you read, there’s always that lingering sense of what might have been.

A couple of months ago, ConsumerAffairs? started getting complaints from consumers about a particular type of gift card: the Vanilla Prepaid Visa card. Consumers report a range of problems, including being unable to use the cards online and having their funds withdrawn right after they activate them.

The problem has been reported to Vanilla, and the company is reportedly investigating the issue. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that the cards are only good for one transaction, so if you’re planning to buy something that requires an activation code, make sure you can actually use the card after you’ve activated it. Otherwise, you could end up with a bunch of empty plastic cards and no new clothes to wear in your upcoming rebranding. And that’s just not very cool.