Vanilla Ice was friends with Pablo Escobar, but he didn’t know the latter was a famous drug kingpin. In a recent interview, the 56-year-old told VladTV that he and Escobar would frequently hang out with other mutual friends in the 90s when he lived in Miami. Although they’d do all sorts of fun stuff along with others, Ice was oblivious to his controversial profession.
He revealed the ’90s were when he had a good time with the drug lord and the Cocaine Cowboys “many, many times,” reports People. Ice explained, “We were all friends…They would land helicopters in my house constantly on Star Island. Come into my house; I had food just for them in the refrigerators.”
He also recalled the lavish treatment he received from his friends at the time. “They would take me in the helicopter; we’d go to these great events and race boats and look at all the cool stuff that they were making,” Ice continued. However, he admitted not knowing who Escobar was because Google didn’t exist back then.
“And I never questioned. We didn’t have Google. I don’t know who these people are. I thought they were businessmen. They liked to race boats like I did. For this reason, he found Escobar a “great person” to have as a friend. Ice, aka Rob Van Winkle, hosted the Columbian narcoterrorist at his Florida home several times.
He detailed, “This sounds ridiculous. First of all, like, I had no Google,” adding, “You don’t go up to people and go, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I have no idea, bro. Guy’s loaded… We’d go out and race boats. We were always on boats. There was always a bunch of bikinis floating around everywhere.”
Later in the interview, Ice revealed the common points between him and Escobar, which made them good friends. It was their love for speedboats that drew them together at first. The Too Cold rapper credited the drug trafficker for making boat racing mainstream by investing significant money and advancing innovations. However, Ice didn’t realize who the Medellín Cartel leader was until the FBI investigated him.
Escobar was gunned down on December 2, 1993, when he was attempting to escape his hideout in Medellín, Colombia. However, he failed to flee and was shot to death by Colombian troops on the tile roof at the age of 44. He was dubbed as the “King of Cocaine,” reports The Sun.
Due to his successful drug business, he was also said to be the seventh richest man in the world. The man was the mastermind behind over 200 car bombs in the Colombian drug wars and was responsible for up to 80 percent of all the cocaine shipped to the United States.
Escobar had an estimated worth of £ 24 billion (approximately $30 billion) and made it to the Forbes ‘Billionaires list’ of the world’s richest people seven years in a row.
