Y2K

For the past two years, Bronx native Ice Spice has been one of the hottest stars in hip-hop. She’s been nominated for four Grammy Awards, won a VMA, and in 2023, became the first rapper with four songs to peak in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to songs with major stars Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift. That she was able to accomplish all this without putting out a full-length album is impressive, but as the release of her debut album, Y2K, nears, some fans have begun to hold the success of her singles against her. They wonder, “Is Ice Spice an ‘album artist’?”

A year ago, such a question might have seemed unfair to ask. After all, just a few months removed from the peak of her PinkPantheress collaboration “Boy’s A Liar, Pt. 2,” Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj’s Barbie soundtrack contribution “Barbie World” was ubiquitous, permeating pop culture as readily as the film that contained it. Ice had the cross-genre co-sign of pop regent Taylor Swift with “Karma,” and her improved stage presence at festivals like Rolling Loud California, Broccoli City, Power 105.1 Powerhouse, Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, and Coachella solidified her breakout star status.

But somewhere in the course of the past six months, once she’d finally actually begun the rollout for her debut, the goodwill that had carried her breakout single “Munch (Feelin’ You)” and follow-ups like “In Ha Mood” and “Deli” seemingly dried up. “Pretty Girl,” with Afropop breakout Rema, failed to chart, as did “Gimmie A Light” and “Phat Butt,” the songs following Ice Spice’s Latto diss “Think U the Shit (Fart).” None of Ice’s solo singles have charted as highly as “Boy’s A Liar,” “Karma,” or “Barbie World.” While it’s to be expected that a newer artist wouldn’t chart as strongly without the big names attached, the drop-off would seem to indicate a reduced interest in the one thing we know Ice Spice does well.

Likewise, reception to each new piece of the rollout has been lukewarm, if not outright icy. After she shared the cover art for Y2K, which featured photography from none other than the great David LaChapelle, it seemed most fans could only focus on the placement of the album’s title — which appears in hot pink graffiti on a metal, Oscar The Grouch-style garbage can. That’s not an indictment in itself — fans similarly roasted Megan Thee Stallion’s Megan cover, prompting her to update it with multiple different options — but the din of disapproval over Ice’s moves has gotten steadily “louder” online since she named her lead single after flatulence.

Obviously, there’s a difference between dropping a handful of hits and crafting a full-length project with a unifying theme or sound. But Ice Spice’s generation may not even put the same importance on that as prior music fans. Just a week ago, her collaborator and cohort PinkPantheress, who it must be noted was also born around the same time as Ice Spice (one year and a few months after the literal Y2K baby), admitted something somewhat surprising. “I don’t listen to albums!” she said. “That’s why when it came to my own album, I was like, ‘Do people care about tracklisting?’ I couldn’t believe it. Some people would were like, ‘Oh, it’s a great album, but the tracklisting doesn’t make sense.’ I’m like, just listen to the songs.”

As shocking as that revelation might have been for older fans who grew up on classics like Illmatic, The College Dropout, and Good Kid, MAAD City (or even more recently and relatedly, Invasion Of Privacy), it makes perfect sense for young adults who have almost never known a world without streaming services and playlists. iTunes was launched four months before PinkPantheress was born — Ice Spice was still in diapers. Audiences have been purchasing and consuming individual tracks longer than either of them have known how to talk. While both of their music may be informed by nostalgia for millennial pop and dance music, neither probably has much direct experience with the way we engaged with that music, of ripping the plastic from a newly purchased CD and popping out the liner notes to read the personnel and songwriting credits.

If their — and their audiences’ — engagement with music primarily came in the form of individual songs from playlists or live performances, why wouldn’t they create music from this mindset, rather than thinking in terms of complete works that require a full 40-minute-or-more playthrough? Besides, it’s not like we all went out and bought albums just because the singles were poppin’ on TRL and 106 & Park, either (I have a personal theory that or nostalgia for certain albums actually comes from the hits that made it to radio more so than the sequencing and cohesion of those full projects). So, rather than asking “is Ice Spice an album artist?” maybe the question should be “does Ice Spice need to be an album artist?”

In a world where Cardi B has maintained her relevance through singles and feature verses nearly six years removed from her vaunted debut, the biggest hit of the year is a battle rap completely unassociated with any longer compilation of music (other than the string of diss tracks that effectively sent Drake into hiding for the past month), and albums’ sales/streaming totals are mostly driven by standout tracks anyway, maybe it doesn’t matter if Ice Spice can make a full album — whatever that means in 2024, anyway. It wasn’t high-concept lyrical virtuosity that made audiences fall in love with the Bronx rapper. It was an attitude, a feeling — a vibe, if you will — that carried her to the heights of stardom and brought thousands of fans to all those stages. If she can deliver that, it shouldn’t matter if it takes 14 tracks or a 2-minute single, Ice Spice will remain a star.