That mix of high-life couture and lowlife shenanigans continues on “Y2K!,” the debut album from Ice Spice, on which the Uptown upstart bangs out 10 songs in about 20 minutes, shrugging off lyrics about hip-shaking and check-signing, hooking up and stepping out, in pint-size blasts of twitchy exuberance. Perhaps with Coco in mind, the songs make their points without over-accessorizing: a couple of verses, a couple of choruses and nary a bridge in sight.
For old-school heads and pop-music tsk-tskers, Ice Spice is a harbinger of hip-hop’s doom and cultural decline. Even her kitschy album art, which emblazons “Y2K” on an overflowing garbage can, seems to be a manicured nail in the eye of her haters. But for a generation of kids white-knuckling dystopia through TikTok and fast fashion, the 24-year-old is making the mood her own.
Ice Spice burst onto the scene less than two years ago with tunes such as “Munch (Feelin’ U)” and “In Ha Mood” that generated slang at a rapid clip and introduced a wider audience to drill, a bleak and battering style of rap born in Chicago that picked up new tics as it was exported to London and reimported back to New York.
“Y2K!” picks up where her previous output left off, with Ice Spice’s quick-and-to-the-pointless quips focused on who has the thickest body, the dankest weed, the brightest jewels. She hasn’t grown much as a lyricist (her perplexing scatological fascination continues), but she’s found new ways to contort her voice, sharpening her flow into a Minajish patter, exhaling gasps like clouds of smoke and burping out words as groans and croaks.
In that way, Spice’s lyrics are just another element of the sonic collages assembled by producer RiotUSA, who has served as the architect of her sound. The beats of “Y2K!” continue to meld the shiftiness of drill with the insistence of club music: high-hats tap on the glass like a horror movie slasher, while drums bang at the door like the cops. The album proves that Ice Spice can find the pocket no matter how cacophonous or sinister the beat, yet another reminder that rap hasn’t been a boys’ club for years.
Those expecting “Y2K!” to serve up turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia like “brat summer” in the Bronx will be disappointed. The album’s short but sweet title serves only as a nod to Jan. 1, 2000, the day Ice Spice was born as Isis Gaston (which is probably an even better moniker than her nom de rap). In the same way that a much-hyped tech disaster didn’t go down that day, Ice Spice’s music doesn’t signal the end of the world — just another way to get through it.
