Everyone needs a job. That’s the thing. You know, you write a hugely successful hit when you’re 23 and you naively think that that’s how it’s going to be forever — you may not have the respect of your peers that you hoped for in the earlier phases of your career, but you had success, and isn’t that the name of the game anyway? Hah. That’s what you thought. (Also apparently Suge Knight sometimes threatens to throw you off of a balcony if you don’t sign over the publishing rights to your hit song over to him, and with that money he funds Death Row Records? Life can be weird!) Anyway, so all of this money is coming in and you think you’ve really hit it big until it all suddenly stops. Suddenly you’re a joke, and not even a beloved joke that people want to hear over and over again, like the joke that a good friend tells you that isn’t funny but that does remind you about why you love them. Just a stupid joke no one wants to hear anymore. You get addicted to drugs. You get lots of tattoos from friends and, because of the drugs, you don’t even know how many you have anymore. (You read more of Vanilla Ice’s Wikipedia page than you ever thought you would.) You never stop releasing albums, which is surprising, but at this point its hardly more than screaming into the void — you’ve hit bottom and everyone around you knows it. But what are you going to do, give up? You can’t give up. You have to support yourself, pull yourself up. You have to take a roll in That’s My Boy. You have to start being the spokesman for Capitol Lighting, which has locations in Florida and New Jersey, and also I think you have to at least sit in on meetings, or at least one meeting, for new lighting designs. Life doesn’t stop. LIGHT doesn’t stop.

You gotta do you, Rob. Take inspiration from every Swarovski crystal necktie you see. Light, light baby, indeed. (Via PaperMag.)