Ice Spice's Debut Album Y2k - Uninspiring and Repetitive
Ice Spice Finally dropped her debut Album Y2k, and in only 23 minutes, she managed to make one of the worst releases of the year.
The Rise of Ice Spice
In the summer of 2022, New York-based rapper Ice Spice blew up all over social media after the video to her hit single, “Munch” went viral on TikTok. In January of 2023, Ice Spice dropped her debut Ep Like..? which further increased her stardom, and landed her collaborations with rap icon Nicki Minaj on songs “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World” (which was also a huge hit due to being tied to the Barbie movie), and also land a collaboration with Taylor Swift on Swift’s song titled “Karma” from Swift’s album Midnights. Two weeks ago, Ice Spice dropped her debut album Y2k, which was supposed to be the coming out party for Ice Spice, but upon listening, it turned out to be the exact opposite.
Life, Death, and Drill Artists Not Evolving
My issue with most drill artists out of New York or Chicago is that they refuse to diversify their sound in any manner, and the same rings true for Ice Spice on this album. Almost every single song on this album followed the same drill formula, and that makes sense seeing the main producer for this album was Ice Spice’s long-time producer, RIOT. Working with producers and writers you have long-time experience with is perfectly fine, but it becomes an issue when the artist is not able to grow due to always working with those producers and writers who bring the same things sonically. There was little to no diversity in the song from a production standpoint or a delivery standpoint, and I dare say that if you listened to the lead singles from this album, you do not need to listen to the album seeing every song sounds the same. There is nothing from a production standpoint that shows us anything different from Ice Spice, and to make things worse she doesn’t show any improvement in her delivery of drill music. There are moments on this album that feel like a regression compared to previous works such as “Barbie World” with Nicki Minaj, and I am left questioning why her team was so comfortable dropping an album that if anything, makes Ice Spice look like a worse artist than she could be.
23 Minutes For a Debut Album is Abysmal
I am not sure if it is the attention span of music listeners, the need for artists to have a TikTok hit or just laziness from artists and record labels, but I am very confused by the trend of albums getting shorter and shorter as the years go by. In her debut album, Ice Spice gave us a whopping 23 minutes of content, and only around 15 minutes of new content, seeing that four of these songs (I would write the title but I do not think you want to read titles centered about defecation) were released as lead singles in the lead up to this album’s release. Your debut album is supposed to be a chance to showcase to the general public your best foot forward when it comes to your artistry as well as show us who you are as an artist, but Ice Spice failed to do both of these tasks. Sure, she stuck to her bread and butter with the drill sound, but her rapping ability regressed so much from previous singles that she did not even give her best showing in the style she amassed popularity for. Furthermore, you did not make a long enough album to show a different side of you saying you wanted to break away from the drill sound for the second half of the album, so all listeners are left with is bad impressions of your artistic capabilities. Ice Spice is an artist who herself has said she does not try to create projects that have deep meaning or a lot of social commentary and instead simply have songs that have witty bars with good replay value, which is perfectly fine, but she fails to achieve even that on this album. Most of the bars that stuck out to me on this album were centered around fecal matter, and as a listener, I found it very odd why almost every song had some sort of mention of human body waste. They were memorable for all the wrong reasons, and instead of wanting to go back to those songs to enjoy the experience again, I wanted to get songs over with as quickly as possible to never have to hear those types of bars again.
So What’s Next?
Not all is lost for Ice Spice, seeing that this album was so forgettable, she could very well drop a much more in-depth and mature sophomore project that this rather uninspiring effort of a debut album can simply fade away into the distance. On songs such as Cash Cobain’s “Fisherrr,” Ice Spice showed she can switch her delivery on songs to a more melodic flow when she wants to, which is why I was very surprised she did not showcase any of that on Y2k. I wish there was more I could say about the album negative or positive, but seeing how short it was, there was little material for me to even begin to dive into. Based on what we got though, I can confidently say for her genre, this is unfortunately one of the worst releases of the year for rap. For what it is worth, Ice Spice is someone with decent rapping capabilities, and I hope she can figure out how to use it much more effectively in her next release.