Vanilla Ice on the ‘Many Times’ He Chilled With Pablo Escobar: ‘We’d Go Out and Race Boats, We Were Always on Boats’

The rapper thought Escobar—who he called a "great" person—and the Cocaine Cowboys were simply "businessmen."

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Vanilla Ice and Pablo Escobar were friends.

In a new interview with VladTV, the 56-year-old described how he hung out with the drug kingpin and the Cocaine Cowboys "many, many times" in the '90s at his home on Star Island in Miami Beach, though didn’t know exactly who Escobar was or what he did.

“We were all friends. ... They would land helicopters in my house constantly, on Star Island," he said around the 51:20 minute mark above. “Come into my house, I had food just for them in the refrigerators. … 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. And I never questioned, we didn’t have Google. I don’t know who these people are. I thought they were businessmen. They like to race boats like I did.”

When asked what Pablo was like in person, Ice described him as being “great.” 

He continued, “This sounds ridiculous. First of all, like, I had no Google. You don’t go up to people and go, ‘What do you do for a living?' I have no idea, bro. Guy’s loaded. … And we’d go out and race boats, we were always on boats. There was always a bunch of bikinis floating around everywhere.”

Vanilla Ice later told TMZ that he and Escobar’s initial common interest was speedboats and that the drug lord made boat racing mainstream, due to how much money he put into the sport. Ice didn’t realize exactly what Escobar was into until the rapper was questioned by the FBI.

Escobar was later killed in Medellin, Colombia in 1993 by local authorities.

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