With Ice Spice finding comfort within her brand of hip-hop, she tries to switch things up for a bit. ‘Y2K’ is an attempt to change what she tends to deliver, yet fails to succeed in general.
Ever since breaking through the spotlight, Ice Spice has very much slotted herself into a formula that has been her bread and butter. Riding through drill and jersey club rhythms that fit her signature flow and attitude, but even then, that can only get her so far - even if some loose singles have shown her switching things up. Looking towards her debut album, ‘Y2K!’, it shows an opportunity and curiosity towards Ice Spice bringing some variation towards what she tends to pull through, both on her vocals as well as the production that she tends to rap onto.
Within this brief record whose melodies already start running thin and where the production retains the mixing and mastering issues carried over from ‘LIKE?’, it’s important to note that Ice Spice is trying to vary her flows and vocal flair, but the overall results just become quite a mess, where her limitation as a rapper just show itself outright. Besides going for her usual monotone drawl that can get quite intense on cuts like ‘Gimmie A Light’ with decent results, going for a more sleazy delivery on ‘Popa’, ‘Plenty Sun’, and especially on ‘Bitch I’m Packin’’ just doesn’t work and ends up becoming sloppy as a result. It doesn’t help that the features around her don’t help at all, whether that be from Travis Scott’s hollow verse on ‘Oh Shhh…’ and Gunna’s non-descript vocals on ‘Bitch I’m Packin’’, though Central Cee does add some flair on ‘Did It First’ even if what he does add lyrically only makes that song sour to a tee, especially given the context of that song.
It all leads up to the writing of this album, an aspect that can be summarized by Ice Spice leaning on flexing around, asserting dominance over her competitors, as well as generally feeling sexy as hell. It’s the usual lyrical flair that she has written over and over again, but there is at least an essence of mischief that she does try to execute, especially on cuts like ‘Popa’ and especially ‘Think U The Shit (Fart)’ that manages to land quite well, and it quite makes sense why she kept making the “Miss Poopie” references across ‘BB Belt’ to ‘Gimmie A Light’, as it is a ridiculous shit to say that will end up making everybody squint their eyes over. But those are the only few cuts that bring those mischievous qualities, causing the rest to end up way less remarkable.
It doesn’t exactly mean that there aren’t songs that worked alright. ‘BB Belt’ with its looping whirring synth does provide an eerie backdrop to the rumbling jersey club beat, ‘Think U The Shit (Fart)’ works the best as the buzzy synths compliment the bass quite well, and ‘Did It First’ and ‘Gimmie A Light’ do bring some vocal samples looping over that provide some refreshing texture to the album’s consistently straightforward production.
But as much as ‘Y2K’ provides some semblance of character and variation to what Ice Spice tends to deliver, it comes off flubbing more than it delivers. Trying to break herself out of her limitations yet only finds more problems amidst that, where even the slight upticks in the production and writing can’t exactly overshadow the problems on display. She might’ve spiced things a bit for her debut album, but for the most part, it doesn’t really work at all.
Favorite Tracks: ‘BB Belt’, ‘Think U The Shit (Fart)’, ‘Gimmie A Light’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Did It First (with Central Cee)’, ‘Bitch I’m Packin’ (with Gunna)’