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Ice Spice: Y2K! review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week
The US star’s subject matter is lightweight and this debut album only lasts 23 minutes, but funny, snotty lines abound and the music is often viscerally exciting
But you can’t argue with the fact that Ice Spice(born Isis Gaston) is rap’s biggest breakout star in recent memory: feted by Taylor Swift and responsible for four US platinum singles in just over six months. Admittedly her current single, a collaboration with Central Cee called Did It First, features plenty of gunfire in time with the hard Jersey club beat, but the filtered vocal samples behind it are melancholy, even poignant. If you want rap to provide insight or unflinching street-level reportage, you’ve clearly come to the wrong place: you’re unlikely to find it on an album where everything from beefs to infidelities to the measuring of one’s celebrity is conducted online; on which no one ever seems to go outside, unless they’re traversing the distance between a front door and a people carrier.
Or read this on The Guardian