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“You can expect a lot of barbs from this album,” said Ice Spice on the red carpet at Billboard’s Women in Music Awards this year. By “barbs”, the 24-year-old New Yorker (who made her name in 2022 by coining the term Munch to diss men used only for oral sex) means that Y2K! – her first full-length album – resounds with stinging slapdowns.
But it’s also a reference to her key influence, Nicki Minaj, with whom she collaborated on the single “Barbie World” (2023) and whose fans are nicknamed “Barbs” after the rapper’s ultra feminine, pink-haired persona.
The nods to Ice Spice’s elder stateswoman are there from the beginning. The opening bars of first track “Phat Butt” see Ice Spice, born Isis Naija Gaston, echoing the beat and noises of nose-wrinkling disdain Minaj made on 2012 single “Beez in the Trap”. Later on the track, she notes her anointed status: “Queen said I’m the princess”.
But though she pays dues to her pop mom, she’s her own woman and swaggers confidently into her own soundscape built from hooks that get in your grill. In fact, she’s eye-rolling the up-and-coming rappers aping her style: “Got these bitches copying my pose/ Got these bitchеs bitin’ on my flows/ Like ballerinas, keep ’em on they toes/ And I really write, like f*** a ghost”.
Over the next nine taut tracks, she doesn’t let up. Single “Think U the S*** (Fart)” finds her flipping off rivals as “not even the fart”. It’s not quite the feminism Gen-Xers like me might have hoped to hear from Gen Z. Spice is constantly asserting her “pretty” looks are “toastin’ bitches like Pop-Tarts”. But there’s a wickedly infectious energy, wit and filth to her confrontational braggadocio.
One of the early criticisms of drill music (which evolved out of hip-hop in Chicago around 15 years ago) was that the raw, aggressive genre’s mostly improvised raps lacked the dexterous wordplay of more skilfully crafted hip-hop. But drill slicked down and smartened up as it moved to New York. Spice drops rhymes with playful and inclusive flair (Y2K! sees her balance a reference to septuagenarian rocker Mick Jagger with a more modern, “Why would I tag her?”).
Born in the Bronx, the daughter of an African-American rapper father and Dominican sales clerk mother came to possess a savvy drive. She studied communications at university, where she also played fierce defence on the school’s volleyball team. She was obsessed with the rap she heard from her father, studying the flows of Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Wu-Tang Clan before moving on to the cute/cutting style of Minaj.
In 2023 Spice dropped the succinct, six-track EP Like..? nailing the millennial slang with an appealing blase style over compressed, concrete beats and looped guitar samples. Y2K! builds on those foundations with brass samples (on “Popa”) menacing twangs and pan-pipe effects (”Oh Shh…” feat Travis Scott) chunky/wonky synths (“Bitch I’m Packin’” feat Gunna) and a tolling bell (“TTYL”).
On “Did It First” with Central Cee (whom she’s rumoured to be dating), she samples the UK drill star’s song “Bumpy Johnson” and finger wags that “if he’s cheatin’ I’m doin’ him worse”. He acknowledges that she only moves away from the mic to give him just one verse, “16 seconds”.
Following a wave of overlong albums, Y2K!’s cool, TikTokable concision feels effortlessly in control. Already able to boast that she’s “four-time Grammy-nominated”, Spice is clearly having fun while hitting all her marks. Barbellous.
