Ice Spice adds unique flavour
Ice Spice's new EP, 'Like...?', has songs that are even better than her irresistible street hit 'Munch'.
Other singles soon followed and her momentum shows no signs of settling down after the recent release of her new EP Like...?. Ice is flavour of the month, and her EP has got songs that are even better than ‘Munch’, including the current hit ‘In Ha Mood’ and the P Diddy sampling ‘Gangsta Boo’ with Lil Tjay.
On this side of the world she has just added another great verse to the new mix of ‘Boy’s a Liar’ by PinkPantheress, another young artist whose unique style of music is almost impossible to remove from your head once you listen to it.
Ice Spice doesn’t sound like anybody else. This is a good thing. All through the years we’ve had unique rappers burst on the scene with a sound and style that was very much their own, and it’s one of the main reasons why rappers as diverse as Kendrick, Slick Rick, Busta, Eminem, Snoop, Nicki, DMX, and Tupac have succeeded.
Being a woman, some of the initial kickback from Ice Spice became automatically negative, and she immediately became a bit of a meme and joke to many so-called guardians of the hip-hop world.
These gatekeepers tended to be in their 40s and male and they similarly were disparaging about some of the other big female rap success stories of the last few years, such as Cardi and Megan and many more.
What is it about young women in rap that pushes the buttons of older guys who seem to be adverse to anything that doesn’t sound like it came from the ’90s?
They can accept a woman if she comes from that sonic background. The likes of Rapsody (a great MC) is in the zone of the acceptable “real rap” that is okay by these gatekeepers, who value intricate rhyme patterns and wordplay, and prefer their women to not rap about sex and to cover up.
There are many other wonderful women rapping who are rightly respected and acknowledged by rap fans of all backgrounds. A great example at the moment is Little Simz, one of my recently featured artists here, who can out-rap anyone and whose music remains quite left-field even as she blows up into a big international star.
With Ice Spice, it’s different. She can co-exist with a great artist such as Little Simz and Rapsody, but the Bronx MC is much more poppy and her lyrics are more explicit too.
The subject matter might be about sexual politics from the hood but it doesn’t mean she is not important as a rapper. Her boasting about various sexual matters is more in line with Cardi and Megan and Nicki, and as usual it’s this type of sexual empowerment that seems to draw out the biggest hypocrisy from guys who don’t seem to mind as much when women are treated as sex objects by male MCs.
Anyway, I guess older men are not the target audience and Ice Spice is gaining momentum no matter what. Remixes and edits of ‘Munch’ and ‘In Ha Mood’ are plentiful, and it’s funny that lots of rap fans who embrace them seem more comfortable when their more jazzy instrumental choice of music is added to Spice’s raps. Ironically, deep down, they actually like the style but can’t admit that her delivery and skills are one of the reasons why these very edits and remixes sound so cool.
Ice Spice is killing it in 2023 and her flow is helping to freshen things up from a rap perspective. As hip-hop celebrates 50 years as a respected art form, there’s a million new rappers every day who sound like the ones who went before.
Girls have been a part of it since deep into the ’70s and young Sweet Tea, Roxanne Shante, and Sha-Rock once trod the turf that Ice Spice is walking on now.
You don’t have to always be as good as Shante or Lauryn Hill or MC Lyte to be a good MC. Most men who ever held a mic would fall down against this esteemed competition too. But there’s always a lane for a unique style, swag, and flow, and for Ice Spice she’s walking it with a strut this February.
