Is Ice Spice the future of music?

You really cannot escape Bronx rapper, Ice Spice, wherever you go, whichever social media platform you're on, she will be there. Isis Gaston better known as Ice Spice has taken the music industry by storm and she truly is somebody we didn't know we needed. Telling Elle that she chose the name Ice Spice because it "literally rhymes" and that she's obsessed with spicy food, putting "hot sauce on everything". Numbers alone, at the age of 23 Ice Spice has racked up over fifty million YouTube views alone and over seven million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Ice was raised in The Bronx, New York, being raised in the Fordham Road area, going to school in The Bronx until she was sent to Sacred Heart, a Catholic high school in Yonkers as her parents feared they were exposing Gaston to bad influences in Bronx schools, however, now Ice has said on No Jumper that the Catholic school had negative influences but the move was beneficial. Going on to study at SUNY Purchase, State University of New York, where she met and became friends with record producer RIOTUSA and hasn't ever made a song without them producing the track, forming a very pure relationship. She had told NME that all of her friends there were painters, sculptors, and dancers, therefore she was around a lot of creative people all the time. Stating that she "had other producer friends at Purchase but they wouldn't take me seriously or saw a potential like RIOT did".

Spice also comes from a very musical background as her father is an underground rap performer, he encourages her to be true to who she is. Giving the public an opportunity to say that she was an industry plant, an artist who fakes being a 'homegrown start-up' despite having the backing of a major or indie label. Due to her dad being a rapper. the fans were saying that's why she was an industry plant, however when talking to DJ Booth, Spice said "He was an underground rapper. I wanna make that clear, 'cause they tryna say that I'm a plant, and I'm not". Her father also put her onto rappers when she was younger as she was put onto Nicki Minaj, French Montana, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and Eminem, pretty much all of the 2000 rappers.

In August 2022, she released the hit single "Munch (Feelin' U)" and it just went off more than you could ever imagine. Just on TikTok alone, the rap audio was used on the platform more than five hundred thousand times, and that's just the original audio, not to mention the remixes everyone has made. The hit single went on to gather co-signs from different huge artists, one of which being Drake. Two months after this, she let the world know she wasn't just a one-hit wonder as Ice released her second major single "Bikini Bottom". From this point on, social media were calling her an icon as she was showing the world her tight raps and immediate quotability, so much so that by the time October 2022 came around, Lil Nas X had dressed up as her for Halloween.

In January 2023, Ice Spice released her debut rap EP "Like..?". The use of the word 'like' is a clever act from Spice as it's not used as a filler word, as we all know it to be in the UK but more of a mouth gag and it just makes sense when it comes from her mouth, rather than it being an annoying repeated word. NME had described the EP as a "version of New York drill with speedy beats and 'it girl' rhymes about shaking ass and feeling self-assured." and that "It's obvious the hits won't stop coming, and neither will the commotion she's created". When asked by NME when she first came into contact with drill music, Ice said that she was shown Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, as well as the fact she said that she loves Central Cee, is this a potential collab for 2023?

In an interview with Rap Caviar, Spice revealed that she records tracks spontaneously to avoid self-censorship as each line in her music could be seen as an intrusive thought to a central theme as she raps "How can I lose if I'm already chose?" followed with "If the party not lit then I'd rather not go" in 'Bikini Bottom'. The fans are obsessed with her signature emotes and screengrab single covers, making it evident that Ice knows exactly how to take advantage of the internet's thirst as her ditzy attitude is used well in terms of memes and snippets.

What do you think 2023 could bring Ice Spice, let us know over on our Instagram, and be sure to follow Spice's journey and drop her a follow.