The music industry is an unforgiving and exclusive career path. Millions of artists worldwide try and fail to achieve mainstream success with only a select few obtaining the sweet reward of getting to hear millions sing their songs. If you asked Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, or any of the greats in modern music, they would tell you that having work ethic, dedication, talent, and time is the only way to climb the ladder from dark depths of irrelevance to the limelight. Yet Ice Spice, the 23-year-old Bronx native, basically skipped all of these steps and quickly became the most talked about artist of the past year by simply shaking her a** and rapping about “grabbing my duh-duh-duh”. There are multiple perspectives to view what I call this “Ice Spice phenomenon” and I want to look at every angle of this rarity to figure out how Ice Spice took the music industry by storm. 

To understand the rise of America’s modern rapstar, we need to delve into her roots to identify the source of her instantaneous fame. Ice Spice, born Isis Naija Gaston, was born on January 1st, 2000, in the fifth-poorest New York City neighborhood to a teen mother. She immediately took a liking to hip-hop after her father, a former underground rapper, introduced her to Wu Tang Clan and other hip-hop industry heavyweights. Gaston always wanted to pursue music and coined her stage name, Ice Spice, during her freshman year of high school. After graduating, she enrolled in a local college only to drop out in her sophomore year because of her musical passion. Her first major breakthrough was meeting RiotUSA, an aspiring young producer. With his help, Ice Spice put out a couple of songs until she struck quick internet gold on August 10th, 2022 with the catchy and provocative hit “Feelin’ U (Munch)”. This song was spread all over social media giants like TikTok and became the spark that caused her to explode into mainstream rap success. 

Why is any of this backstory important? Because as Ice Spice noted in one interview, “It’s important to remember where everything started.” Ice Spice’s origin is similar to that of a lot of inner-city kids and is such a classic underdog story that people cannot help but root for her. Her openness about how lucky she was to make it “out of the hood” and onto the cover of Vogue makes her a humble force to be reckoned with. Unlike most celebrities, she recognizes her privilege and still tries to stay humble and kind through the temptations and greed that accompany fame. And Ice Spice is completely content with her grounded lifestyle despite the craziness that comes with newfound fame: “I’m most proud of staying grounded so far, because I’ve already been through so many things that I know a lot of people would’ve lost their minds [over].” Another leg-up she has from most big-name celebrities is her lack of controversy. Even though she hasn’t been in the game for too long, Ice Spice has still proven herself to be an authentic, positive, and independent woman with an unapologetic “bad-b*tch” persona that seems to resonate with a lot of people, especially female hip-hop fans. My first theory as to why Ice Spice has survived the cruel nature of the mainstream rap game is simple: she “keeps it real”. “The world will really try to eat you up and spit you back out, so I just try to stay peaceful, grounded, positive, gorgeous, and safe.” Facts.

However, this theory as to why Ice Spice has gained such massive popularity--by “keeping it real”--is certainly an optimistic one to say the least. It is my favorite way of looking at the “In Ha Mood” singer’s rise, but now I want to explore a more popular and unfortunately realistic theory as to why she has gained the love of teenagers worldwide: the power of her voluptuous butt. One thing I didn’t mention in Ice Spice’s inspirational and underdog origin story described above was that her first brush with fame wasn’t concerning her music. In January of 2021, Ice Spice gained millions of views on her TikTok account for participating in the then-viral, highly-problematic-for-a-kids-app, “Buss-It” challenge.  The goal of the challenge was to show off your butt to the beat drop of Erica Banks’ 2020 song, “Buss It.” You know, just a classic TikTok challenge.

I first started listening to Ice Spice in November of 2022 and I really loved her collaboration with PinkPantheress’ “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2”. I posted it on my Snapchat story to share the music video with my friends and I was genuinely shocked by the amount of people sliding up commenting things like, “stfu we know ur just watching 4 the a**”. When I overhear anyone my age talking about her, it is always about if she is a “baddie” or not. Her distinctive orange hair seems to stir up quite the controversy among sixteen-year-old boys. You can find arguments about her body within every corner of the internet: Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and even in her own Instagram comment sections. All of this buzz around her body is certainly a valid yet demoralizing explanation for the young woman’s success. People constantly claim that Ice Spice is “asking for” this level of body analysis by using provocative and sex-positive language in her songs, but this is hardly the truth. Male rappers everywhere have highly provocative lyrics and they aren’t given a second thought. But Ice Spice certainly isn’t the only female artist whose physical appearance has undergone intense scrutiny. She is just simply the next on the internet chopping block. The controversy surrounding Ice Spice’s rise to fame unquestionably exposes a massive underlying issue in hip-hop culture when it comes to double standards and misogyny, but that deserves a whole piece for itself. For now, I want to bring about my final theory as to why Ice Spice is topping the music charts right now.

This theory is the one that I strongly believe is the real reason for Ice Spice’s success. It is sort of a summation of the two previous theories while also including her actual talent. Yes, for the first time in this essay about a rapper, I am going to discuss Ice Spice’s rapping abilities. I do believe that Ice Spice first became famous due to her accentuated curves. It is just the hard truth and it has happened to other women as well. Influencer and professional dancer Charli D’amelio is a prime example of this type of success. To make a long story short, she blew up on TikTok from internet obscurity to becoming the most popular dancer on the app simply from her looks. That was in 2019 and, four years later, she is still one of the most followed creators on the app. She has since created makeup brands, shoe brands, books, and even a reality show. Through hard work and staying kind, Charli kept the attention of her large audience and proved herself to the toughest jury in the world: the internet. Just like Charli D’amelio, I believe that Ice Spice maintained the momentum of her rise to the top by proving that she was worthy of fame. 

By gaining enough relevancy to escape the TikTok bubble that most wannabe artists are trapped in, Ice Spice was able to break through to a much larger audience. She began dropping more music and working on improving her production and lyricism. If you listen to her first song, “Bully Freestyle”, versus her latest song (as of September 2023), “On the Radar”, you will undoubtedly hear a clear improvement of quality. She started her career with shallow lyricism and a klutzy metaphor of comparing herself to a bully with the lyrics, “D*mn, I'm on my bully I do too much I'm really that b*tch, huh?”. In contrast, her new song has her reflecting on staying grounded and leaving behind her siblings while being “on the radar” of the world by rapping, “In the end I know that I'm good. Understand that I'm misunderstood and the plan to get bro out the hood.” As Ice Spice dropped hit after hit, she began appearing on the Billboard Hot 100 multiple times. If you look at her discography, you can literally see how over time her collaborators became more and more famous. She went from collabing with Skillibeng and B-Lovee (who?) to Nicki Minaj and freaking Taylor Swift. And this was no accident. Ice Spice worked hard to climb the fame ladder. Did you know that she reached out to Taylor Swift to collaborate on her album? It takes serious guts to do that and it displays Ice Spice’s dedication to increasing her fan base and spreading her music to every ear on the earth.

People can look at the “Ice Spice phenomenon” from different angles, but you won’t get the true source of Ice Spice’s continued fame unless you combine all of them. It is unfortunate when a talented young woman like Ice Spice is sexualized. She becomes a political pawn that sparks arguments from both conservatives and liberals. All of the conversations about the woman are about her body and not about her actual talent. It feels like when all of the discussion is focused on this sexism, the rest of the woman is left out. Ice Spice has a beautiful and kind heart and is a genuinely talented rapper. Her relaxed and flowy rapping style over hardcore beats is a redefinement of the trap genre. But all of that is overlooked. It feels like the conversation about Ice Spice stops at whether or not her curves got her to the limelight. Not if her bars are “fire" or if her lyrics have deeper meaning.  If you take anything out of this essay, I want you to take this: There is always more than one side to a person. If you want to truly understand someone then you have to take them for who they are. All of who they are. You need to know the good and the not-so-good in order to achieve that deeper understanding. Ice Spice is the prime example of being more than meets the surface and that is exactly why her fame is so divisive. People don’t take the time to look at her with an open mind and an open heart. She made it to the top and I look forward to continuing to watch her rise even higher. Because as the a**-shaking, heavy-rapping, ambitious Bronx native said herself, “I’m not a regular artist, Goku and I'm just gettin' started. [...] Hunnit bands in Chanely. But I'm still shakin' a** in the deli.” Grrah.