Ice Spice
Y2K!
TENTHOUSAND
Miss Poopie has arrived in full force. First introduced on “Deli” last summer, and popping up again on standout single “Gimmie a Light,” Ice Spice’s fecal alter-ego has garnered a fair amount of controversy, as she’s started using potty talk to shit on her detractors in no uncertain terms. On her studio debut Y2K!, the Bronx rapper doubles down on her assertion that she’s the shit, letting Miss Poopie shake ass in jeans and a B.B. Simon belt while flexing her millionaire status.
Y2K! gives the impression of a young artist exploring her range and—to follow Ice Spice’s lead on the usage of scatalogy—throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. The opening track “Phat Butt” is some of the most technical rapping of Spice’s career, though her assertion that other rappers are “biting all [her] flows” falls woefully flat; I had to check that I hadn’t accidentally played a Nicki Minaj song because the influence is so transparent. Spice follows this up with a few stabs at more trap-influenced beats, enlisting the help of superstars Travis Scott and Gunna to buoy her own attempts at the production style. She finds the most success on the unassisted “Popa,” where Spice’s deadpan spray of one-liners tag teams with the bass, her flow punching like a flurry of jab combos in a synth-driven boxing match.
Named for a time when monochrome tracksuits, bedazzling, and Microsoft-powered futurism ruled the cultural fabric, Ice Spice uses the second half of Y2K! to flaunt her status as it-girl of the Y2K aesthetic revival that Gen Z has ushered in. Evoking the 2000s pop culture movement, Spice boasts turn-of-the-millennium fashion behemoths True Religion and the aforementioned B.B Simon on “BB Belt,” while Miss Poopie messes with another woman’s man. Two tracks afterward, producer RiotUSA cascades heart-thumping 808s over a pitched-up flip of Sean Paul’s 2002 dancehall hit “Gimme the Light,” resulting in possibly the nastiest beat on the whole project. Later, “TTYL” ends the album like it’s a BlackBerry text conversation in 2007.
Born on the same day the millennium bug was predicted to wreak havoc on computer systems, Ice Spice and Y2K have been linked from the very beginning. And just like the aesthetics of the 2000s that followed, Y2K! has produced some absolute bangers (shoutout rhinestone couture) and some misses (please leave dresses-over-jeans in the past). TikTok’s Princess Di has been chosen as the torch-bearer for the Y2K renaissance—warts and all—and Y2K! is her acceptance speech.
