Ice Spice Ups the Ante on ‘Y2K’

Ice Spice has noted in several interviews that she was a popular girl in high school, well before she started releasing music. One story she told Erykah Badu and her daughter, Puma Curry, for Interview functions pretty well as an analogy for her debut album, Y2K. Ice, born Isis Gaston, attended a 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 as she stood out as a queen bee; she even prayed to God at night that her hair would be straight by morning. However, with her firm and loving dad’s encouragement, she decided to go to school wearing her natural hair one day, which riddled her with anxiety. “I spent so much time in the bathroom just looking at myself before going back to class. I was so nervous for something that didn’t even fucking matter.”

Y2K, which takes its name from both the fashion and apocalyptic panic that marked Ice’s birthday — Jan. 1, 2000 — builds upon the youthful cool and feminized drill that made her a star, and more important, ventures beyond it. In a tight 10-song run that uses her limited range and our shrinking attention spans to its advantage, Ice is more animated and wordy than ever. Her excremental single (and Latto diss) “Think You the Shit (Fart)” is actually the least-compelling song on an album that thrives in chaos and clamor, like the hyper-popped Jersey Club hip-shaker “Did It First,” with Central Cee. Like wearing her natural hair to the eventual adoration of everyone around her, the Ice of Y2K feels like an artist taking ownership for 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, like the rap princess who says she wants a historic reign — like Badu’s, she tells the elder — is merely trying on different crowns for size, still figuring out what hers should feel like. 

A lot of what she landed on here is exciting; RiotUSA makes magic with beats that expand Ice’s repertoire, and lauded engineer Mike Dean does what he does best as hip-hop’s leading sonic drama king. The production booms and rattles, as intense as it is playful, keeping a smidge of the levity that separated Ice from the doom and gore of the rest of New York’s drill scene. She and Travis Scott meld worlds on “Oh Shhh …,” as he puts his signature spacy ad-libs under a drill flow that complements her own. But then Ice and Riot take their sound south on “Popa” and “Plenty Sun,” combining regal trap with drill’s tittering high hats. Elsewhere, the distorted guitar of “Bitch I’m Packin’” and “TTYL” channel Rico Nasty’s rap-rock revival, with Gunna riding the former with more vim 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 hearkening back to New York. “Gimmie a Light” and its Sean Paul sample nods to the city’s Caribbean culture, and “Phat Butt,” the album opener, sounds like essential Nicki Minaj.

Ice’s affiliation with Minaj has been one of the definitive attributes of her career, from their smash “Princess Diana” to their collaboration on the Barbie soundtrack. “Queen said I’m the princess,” Ice raps on “Phat Butt,” a song that she tells Rolling Stone claps back at claims that she can’t really rap. It is a stronger lyrical showing than her singles before it, but it also teeters the line between Minaj reverence and an impression. Ironically, Ice raps “Got these bitches copying my flows” while sounding exactly like Minaj. This makes her interpolation of a classic Minaj line on “Popa” — “Bad bitches, I’m your leader” — more fraught than fun. Yet, the new ways Ice plays with her voice and delivery on Y2K are a welcome indebtedness to the queen. It’s exciting to hear her flex variations of a whispery growl on “Popa,” “Bitch I’m Packin’,” and “BB Belt.” They breathe life into an artist who can sometimes border on sounding bored (without the full commitment to the bit of rappers like Anycia and Karrahboo). After a string of performances on Saturday Night Live, for Spotify, and Rolling Loud that drew criticism for her lack of stage presence, plus concerns about her capacity as an MC, it’s satisfying to hear Ice put real energy into her animation. 

She’s clearly pushing her pen, too. Ice isn’t gonna win a Pultizer, and that’s not what any reasonable fan is listening for. What she does is embody something primal — the desire to be hot, say what you want, and get a lot for doing a little. To that end, Ice has found newer, more entertaining, and culturally relevant ways to assert her status as the It girl on the block, like when she casually clarifies that she’s “Light skinned, but I’m Black, he can tell by my hair” on “BB Belt,” and chronicles a date that includes a strip club with a lot of ones, a trap house with a lot of guns, and fake Percocet causing “tummy runs” on “Plenty Sun.” Some of her constant motifs may still work for her (she’s still calling out munches, and it seems fair for her to own that phrase since it helped propel her rise), but others sound repetitive and elementary (please, enough with the poop). There are a few more clunkers like “Tell her drop a pin, we ain’t bowling,” “I always come in first, yeah, I‘m never last,” and “No rocks, no scissors, just getting that paper” throughout, but there are enough bright spots that they don’t stop the party. 

In an age when rap girls have become some of the biggest pop stars, the thing that makes Ice both endearing and polarizing is how regular she is. Under the superstar calling cards she employs — designer clothes, money brags, and calling herself a “brand” — is the kind of cool girl we’ve all encountered, from the lunchroom to the boardroom. That kind of girl is not made, she just is. Ice’s charm seems effortless, innate, uncomplicated. But in the realm of modern rap, where the most ubiquitous personalities and performers are often larger than life (Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Minaj), it’s not clear if that will be enough to keep her at the top. Y2K is Ice Spice putting the work in to build something bigger without losing herself, and in important ways, it pays off; it matters.