Review Summary: Please see very centre of the album art for a one word review
Just in case social media hasn’t clued you in a million times over already, Ice Spice is a rapper from NYC who rose to the forefront of public consciousness predominantly through popular social media platform/ brainrot fast-tracker, TikTok. Her rapping style is perhaps best described as Nicki Minaj after an aneurysm, but this doesn’t matter too much because her social media presence is absolutely flawless, and her debut LP has, surprisingly, turned out to be something of musical revelation. There’s a medical phenomenon known as hysterical blindness which, as the name suggests, can sometimes result in an instantaneous/ progressive loss of sight as a stress response to triggering or traumatic visual stimuli. In this regard,
Y2K! is an important specimen for scientific research, since in the course of my voluntary torture sessions with this record I inadvertently discovered the auditory equivalent. Yes, my brain shut off my aural intake as a protective measure for my sanity, and the reason may not surprise you: the album is not particularly good. It’s repetitive, insistently obnoxious and, somewhat ironically, completely flavourless. On a positive note, though, at least the next time I’m in need of an excuse for forgetting to buy milk from the corner store or I’m trying to grab a few extra hours sleep on public transport during match day, I need only spin
Y2K! for 10 seconds and blissful silence will ensue. Considering how useful such an effect is going to be for me, 5 stars is just too low a score, so it hurts me that I can’t base this review purely on personal lifelong value.
This entirely too-long 23 minute record doesn’t have a single functional part. Thunderous bass masquerading as beats that sit way too high in the mix strong-arm every other element on display, throbbing with the artificial vibration of a circa-2016 SoundCloud rap cut. The stylistic undercurrent switches between drill (‘Oh Shhh…’), trap (‘Bitch I’m Packin’’, ‘Plenty Sun’), sample-heavy chops (‘Did It First’), and some more pop-centric, synthy hooks (‘Think U The *** (Fart)’ fgs), but it’s all tied together by the same clipping, head-wobbling bass no matter how ill-fitting. The addition of Ice Spice’s lethargic flows over the top makes all of the elements feel frustratingly disparate, as though every aspect were engineered simultaneously in separate studios, and the final mix produced by someone who succumbed to some sudden, unexplained form of deafness after hearing the rough cut. The aftereffect is made exponentially worse by just how mind-numbingly repetitive the vast majority of the material is. Hooks throughout the release are mundane, underwritten, and, despite the changes in style, bludgeoningly monotonous thanks to the omnipresent white-knuckle bass. This is an issue that carries over to the lyrical content too; simplistic choruses are spun on a loop, identical rhymes are much too frequent, topics are a consistently recycled… none of it gels, and it all feels extremely immature and alienating.
In spite of her career as a rapper, Ice Spice has opined that she is not a lyricist. Well, shut the front door and stop the presses. In fact, she prefers to freestyle over beats and then MacGyver bars from the patchwork of improvised material, and the result feels irritatingly formless and unfinished. There’s no creativity to the flows or thematic content, and despite the intended puerility of the wordplay, there’s no character here other than the eye-rolling immaturity permeating every aspect. Ice Spice likes telling us that she’s the best, that she has a rotund posterior, that she’s not to be trifled with, that she keeps losing her lighter, and that she likes sex and money. Oh, and she seems to have an odd obsession with fecal matter and associated bodily functions. All of which is good, clean, relateable fun, of course, but so one-dimensional is the manner in which we are told these fascinating tidbits that there’s no real personality or thoughtfulness to any of it. It’s smirk-inducingly juvenile poetry of the type found in public toilet cubicles that’s been set to booming bass. To add some variety into the frozen water and paprika stew there’s a few features, however, notably from Travis Scott and Central ‘Suppressed Violent Coughing Fit’ Cee, but what little diversity they afford to the material is swallowed whole by how invasive the effect of the music is. Their appearances don’t feel like collaborations so much as crowbarred-in verses and occasional one-word battle cries, all of which are toothless and irritating. In that regard, they fit the album like a much-too-small pair of hot pants.
The social media taint/ industry plant vibes radiate from this project as if it’s been sprayed by a skunk, with very little to recommend it as anything other than a soundtrack for some upcoming TikTok trend. There’s doubtlessly an audience for Ice Spice amongst the army of impressionable youths who may find this kind of rap wonderfully diverting, but it’s hard to deny just how artistically barren this release in particular is. Nonetheless, criticism directed squarely at the lyricism is a touch unfair since this is Ice Spice's debut album and she's still a fledgling artist- so as a vibe, does the album hold up? Unfortunately, still no. It’s hard to deny that there’s an appeal to intensely pounding pop rap/ milquetoast drill capable of blowing out your car’s subwoofers, but at its core
Y2K! has little to offer besides bland hooks, repetitive choruses and garbage bars set to bass methodically engineered to sound as patience-pokingly obnoxious as possible. The writing method Spicy Ice employs is hardly unheard of in hip hop circles, and if she spent a little more time actually working on the lyrics, a great deal more substance would undoubtedly materialise, in addition to feeling much more cohesive against the beats themselves in spite of their simplicity. As it stands, the lack of focus is betrayed by every second of the 23 minutes the project runs for. In high school, I had an acquaintance who for the longest time claimed he was a rapper, and then one day he actually followed through on his threats by performing an horrendous original song for a charity talent event. The track was everything you would expect from a 13-year-old wannabe rap star; unnecessarily gratuitous profanity, ill-conceived wordplay and an aggressively annoying chorus set to a demo-button beat. He promptly received a week’s afterschool detention because of how inappropriate the material was.
Y2K! is about the same level of quality, but with the unintentionally chucklesome entertainment factor forcibly removed.
