“Go ninja, go ninja, go!”
Vanilla Ice first created the always-stuck-in-your-head “Ninja Rap” in 1991 for the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise.
Now, with the recently released reboot of “TMNT” in theaters, Mashable interviewed the “Ice Ice Baby” sensation about his thoughts on the new turtle theme rap, “Shell Shocked” by Wiz Khalifa, Juicy J and Ty Dolla $ign.
“I have a lot of respect for who made this new song. I saw somewhere that they said I hated it, and that’s not true. I want to clear the record. The truth is: The song to me, as a huge Ninja Turtles fan, I mean, I can tell you everything about the turtles,” Vanilla Ice told Mashable. “The new song feels like something that was done for corporate. I don’t feel like [the rappers] were real Ninja Turtles fans. It would come out in the way they rap if they were fans. I have no disrespect toward any of the artists, you know, they’re all legendary artists. I’m just stating my opinion that it seems corporate.”
He went on to explain how his rap was born out of a special relationship with the turtles.
“You’ve got to understand the history and have a magical connection — a connection that’s tied in to the beginning of the turtles and all the way through their evolution. I would connect with it, and it wouldn’t be corporate. When I did the ‘Ninja Rap’ I did that in my hotel room by myself with an SP-1200 drum machine. I did the whole thing there because I could see the turtles dancing there. It was all about dancing back in those times,” he said. “Before, the turtles were not expected to dance. I actually got the turtles to dance in the movie. It was a great, little epic moment, and now it’s tattooed into everybody’s memory banks forever.”
Compare the two TMNT theme songs for yourself:
