Only July 2, 1990, Vanilla Ice released his new song “Ice Ice Baby.” The opening guitar rift for this tune sounded astonishingly similar to the guitar rift of the collaborative work of David Bowie and Queen, titled “Under Pressure.”. The legal teams of both David Bowie and Queen sued Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement (Hubbard, 2017). As observable by utilizing a side-by-side comparison, the evidence is damning.
At the time of its release, “Ice Ice Baby” became the first hip-hop song to top the Billboard Top 100 list. Consequently, Vanilla Ice could not afford to lose the rights to this song, as it was one of his most profitable (Carlbom, 2013). Sadly, using the same or similar music themes without giving credit to the original creator was very common in the hip-hop genre during this time (Denham, 2016). Certainly, Vanilla Ice did not expect to be persecuted for the use of the rift. However, using the work of these two high-profile artists made it much easier to catch this infringement (“Artists,” 2016). Vanilla Ice disputed claims that he was using the guitar rift, citing a small melodic difference of one or two notes. He even joked that the melodies for each song were each unique in their own way. Vanilla Ice was then threatened with the suit (“Vanilla Ice,” n.d.). He fully expected this small discrepancy to protect him from
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While financially, the artists received compensation, their creative interested were not necessarily protected. Both of these artists could have lost credibility. Vanilla Ice willfully used the rift without permission. Due to the settlement reached, David Bowie and Queen are now permanently link to Vanilla Ice (Runtagh, 2016). Granted, they could have insisted that Vanilla Ice’s proposed settlement would not work for them, but they are hardly to blame for taking a deal instead of burdening themselves with the task of going through