Ice Spice is a divisive figure in the world of rap. There are people who think her rise over the last two years is representative of all that’s wrong with rap: witness the wailing and gnashing of teeth that greeted her inclusion in Complex’s list of the 50 best New York rappers, albeit at No 50. Equally, there are people who posit her as something of a saviour figure, “a new rap star in a genre that sorely needs one”, as one recent US profile put it, citing statistics that point to “a steady decline in [rap]’s consumption”. Said figures suggested rap and R&B’s share of the US market had declined by 1.5% between 2022 and 2023, but it was still by far the biggest genre in America – no need to man the lifeboats just yet. But you can’t argue with the fact that Ice Spice (born Isis Gaston) is rap’s biggest breakout star in recent memory: feted by Taylor Swift and responsible for four US platinum singles in just over six months.
The weird thing is that the naysayers and boosters alike have reached their conclusions for exactly the same reasons. There is Ice Spice’s relentless pop focus. “Let’s talk drill / Who bigger than she?” she brags on her debut album’s Gimmie a Light, but her take on the subgenre rids it of grit and menace. Admittedly her current single, a collaboration with Central Cee called Did It First, features plenty of gunfire in time with the hard Jersey club beat, but the filtered vocal samples behind it are melancholy, even poignant. The synth line on the amazingly titled Think U the Shit (Fart) carries with it a memory of electro-infused 80s pop-R&B. When the backing tracks tend to the ominous – as on Phatt Butt or Plenty Sun – something about Ice Spice’s snotty humour lends their mood the air of a cartoon or video game.
