BARBARELLA

Ice Spice’s concise, barb-laden and wickedly infectious Y2K! feels effortless as she takes aim at rappers

- Helen Brown

“You can expect a lot of barbs from this album,” said Ice Spice on the red carpet at Billboard’s Women in Music Awards this year. By “barbs”, the 24-year-old New Yorker (who made her name in 2022 by coining the term Munch to diss men used only for oral sex) means that Y2K! – her first full-length album – resounds with stinging slapdowns.

But it’s also a reference to her key influence, Nicki Minaj, with whom she collaborated on the single “Barbie World” (2023) and whose fans are nicknamed “Barbs” after the rapper’s ultra feminine, pink-haired persona.

The nods to Ice Spice’s elder stateswoman are there from the beginning. The opening bars of first track “Phat Butt” see Ice Spice, born Isis Naija Gaston, echoing the beat and noises of nose-wrinkling disdain Minaj made on 2012 single “Beez in the Trap”. Later on the track, she notes her anointed status: “Queen said I’m the princess”.