Ice Spice has noted in several interviews that she was a popular girl in high school, long before she started releasing music. A story she told to Erykah Badu and her daughter, Puma Curry, for Interview works quite well as an analogy for his debut album, Y2K. Ice, born Isis Gaston, attended Catholic school in Yonkers, a suburb north of her Bronx neighborhood. “There were so many white girls, and I was the only one with curly hair for a long time,” she said, explaining that she constantly straightened her now-famous curls to blend in, even though she stood out like a queen bee; she even prayed to God at night that her hair would be straight in the morning. However, with her father’s firm and loving encouragement, she decided to go to school with her natural hair one day, which left her with anxiety. “I spent so much time in the bathroom looking at myself before I went back to class. I was so nervous about something that didn’t matter.”
Y2Kwhich takes its name from both the fashion and the apocalyptic panic that marked Ice’s birthday – January 1, 2000 – builds on the youthful cool and feminization that made her a star, and more importantly, goes beyond it. In a series of 10 tight songs that uses Taking advantage of her limited reach and our ever-shrinking attention spans, Ice is more animated and verbose than ever. Her excremental single (and its critique of Latto) “Think You the Shit (Fart)” is actually the least compelling song on an album that thrives on chaos and clamour, like the hyper-poppy Jersey Club hip-shaker “Did It First,” featuring Central Cee. Like wearing her natural hair for the eventual adoration of everyone around her, Ice of Y2K It feels like an artist taking ownership of her music, making an effort, experimenting, looking inward, and taking up space. Yet as clean and captivating as her debut is, there’s also a sense of unease, as if the rap princess who says she wants a historic reign—like Badu’s, she tells the older one—is simply trying on different crowns to see what hers should look like.
Much of what she’s done here is exciting; RiotUSA makes magic with beats that expand Ice’s repertoire, and engineer Mike Dean does what he does best as a hip-hop leader. The drama king. The production is booming, as intense as it is playful, while maintaining a hint of the lightness that separated Ice from the doom and gore of the rest of the New York drill scene. She and Travis Scott merge their worlds on “Oh Shhh…”, while he places his signature spacey ad-libs under a drill flow that complements hers. But then Ice and Riot take their sound south on “Popa” and “Plenty Sun,” combining regal trap with drill’s sneering high hats. Elsewhere, the distorted guitar of “Bitch I’m Packin’” and “TTYL” channels Rico Nasty’s rap-rock revival, with Gunna riding the former with more vigor than we’re used to from the laid-back Young Thug disciple. Unsurprisingly, we get bits of the Jersey Club rap that has dominated the past few summers on “Did It First” and “BB Belt,” but there’s also a throwback to New York. “Gimmie a Light” and its Sean Paul sample nod to the city’s Caribbean culture, and “Phat Butt,” the album’s opener, sounds like Nicki Minaj’s go-to.
Ice’s affiliation with Minaj has been one of the defining attributes of her career, from their hit “Princess Diana” to their collaboration on the Barbie soundtrack. “Queen said I was the princess,” Ice raps on “Phat Butt,” a song she narrates Rolling stone Ice responds to claims that she can’t really rap. It’s a stronger lyrical display than her previous singles, but it also teeters on the line between Minaj worship and imitation. Ironically, Ice raps “Got these bitches copying my flows” while sounding exactly like Minaj. That makes her interpolation of a classic Minaj line on “Popa”—“Bad bitches, I’m your leader”—more strained than entertaining. Still, the new ways Ice plays with her voice and flow on “Popa” Y2K are a welcome tribute to the queen. It’s exciting to hear her whispered growl variations on “Popa,” “Bitch I’m Packin'” and “BB Belt.” They bring to life an artist who can sometimes bordering on sounding bored (without the full commitment of rappers like Anycia and Karrahboo). After a series of performances on Saturday Night Live, for Spotify and Rolling Loud which has drawn criticism for his lack of stage presence, as well as concerns about his ability as an MC, it’s satisfying to hear Ice put some real energy into his hosting.
She’s clearly pushing her pen, too. Ice isn’t going to win a Pultizer, and that’s not what any reasonable fan is listening to. What she’s doing is embodying something primal—the desire to be sexy, to say what you want, and to get a lot for a little. To that end, Ice has found newer, more entertaining, and culturally relevant ways to assert her status as the neighborhood It girl, as when she casually notes that she’s “light-skinned, but I’m black, he can tell by my hair” on “BB Belt,” and recounts a date that includes a strip club with lots of people, a brothel with lots of guns, and fake Percocet causing “diarrhea” on “Plenty Sun.” Some of her consistent motifs may still work for her (she still screams snacks, and it seems only fair that she appropriates this phrase because it helped her (to propel his rise), but others seem repetitive and elementary (please stop with the poop). There are a few other bits of nonsense like “Tell him to drop a pin, we’re not bowling”, “I always come first, yeah, I’m never last” and “No rocks, no scissors, I just get this paper” throughout, but there are enough positives that they don’t stop the party.
In an era when female rappers have become some of the biggest stars in pop, what makes Ice both endearing and polarizing is her consistency. Beneath the superstar calling cards she uses—branded clothes, boasting, and calling herself a “brand”—lies the kind of cool girl we’ve all encountered, from the cafeteria to the boardroom. That kind of girl isn’t made, she just is. Ice’s charm seems natural, innate, effortless. But in the world of modern rap, where the most ubiquitous personalities and artists are often larger than life (Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Minaj), it’s not clear that’s happening. will be enough to keep her at the top. Y2K Ice Spice is trying to build something bigger without losing itself, and in a big way, it’s paying off; that’s important.