When she appeared with her calm, confident cadence on 2022’s “Munch (Feelin’ U),” Ice Spice raised her flag as the next torchbearer for drill music. The subgenre had been based on heavy beats, sugary samples, and slippery flows, and was largely spearheaded by male rappers (the late Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign, for example) until Spice broke in, injecting it directly into the pop music mainstream with co-signs with Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj and their hit songs.
Success came quickly for the then-22-year-old singer, who blended the slang of her Bronx hometown with Gen Z culture into fast-paced anthems produced by her music partner RiotUSA. Songs like “Deli” and “In Ha Mood” struck the right balance of street and pop—just enough for rap fans, softened around the edges for broader appeal—and set the table for what was tipped to be a major breakthrough with her debut album.
Spice doesn’t quite hit her mark on “Y2K!” , opting instead to delve deeper into music’s safest, darkest corners. There are no surprise Swift collaborations or chart-topping beats on the 10-track collection, just heavy, opaque instrumentals and swaggering rhymes. Spice has faced criticism for her willingness to embrace pop stardom so easily in a genre where authenticity is tied to how closely you adhere to its core principles. Accusations of betrayal are often hurled at those who play to the conventions of a genre without respecting its structure, and Spice’s Grammy nomination for pop this year didn’t help her case.
“Y2K!” seems to address this at least musically, at 23 minutes and 18 seconds (a minute shorter than the deluxe version of last year’s “Like..?”), with short tracks that focus on Spice’s talents as a serious, personal rapper. The confident, easygoing tone that gave some of the tracks on “Like..?” a jolt is evident on “Y2K!”, whose title refers to her birthday (she was born on January 1, 2000). The single “Think U the Shit (Fart)” is both deliberately blunt and disconcertingly catchy — “Think you the shit, bitch? You’re not even the fart,” she chants in the chorus — while “Gimme a Light” relies on the classic hip-hop tactic of sampling decades-old hits (in this case, a Sean Paul single) to evoke an air of familiarity.
Spice doesn’t have to work hard to prove why she’s risen above the fray so quickly, and some of the best moments on “Y2K!” occur when she’s leaning into the formula that got her to this point. “TTYL” boasts a wild energy—she sounds like she’s rapping in italics—while “BB Belt” is a spiritual cousin to “Deli” with its urgent, mellow instrumentals and her take on the scale: “Lightskin but I’m Black you can tell by my hair / I get money, il…
But these are fleeting moments on an album that doesn’t quite deliver. “Y2K!” is filled with empty, formulaic songs (“Oh Shhh…,” featuring Travis Scott; “Bitch I’m Packin',” featuring Gunna). Yet Spice’s versatility—she’s at home in a slinky “PinkPantheress” and a pornographic Cash Cobain video—is second only to the fact that she tells, not shows, that her roots are still intact. It’s easy to walk away from “Y2K!” in awe of her Bronx-raised talents, but also baffled that she’s somehow back where she started.
