The New York rapper opens up to 'Teen Vogue' about her seemingly instant rise to fame.
It can be hard being on top of the world, but Ice Spice is basking in her time on top. The New York rapper opens up about her seemingly instant rise to fame for Teen Vogue's June issue, breaking down how she manages to stay grounded amid her growing popularity and addressing the controversy surrounding said fame.
Ice -- born Isis Gaston -- began making music in 2021, and by August of the next year, her On the Radar freestyle went viral and her single, "Munch," dominated the final months of the year. After signing a deal with 10K Projects and Capitol Records in the fall, the Bronx native added fuel to her already raging fire and dropped her debut EP Like..? at the top of 2023.
"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 f**king minds," the 23-year-old tells the outlet of her rise to fame. "The whole lifestyle change is super drastic, especially coming from where I come from, not coming from sh*t and not having a lot growing up, to now -- it's the complete opposite.... Even though it's a positive change, it's still a change."
Since the rapper hit the scene, she's found herself on the Met Gala red carpet, gained over 37 million monthly listeners on Spotify and received the cosign of rappers like Drake and the self-proclaimed Queen of Rap herself, Nicki Minaj, even landing a musical collaboration with the latter.
Minaj dubbed the young up-and-comer her heir apparent, and Billboard reports that their "Princess Diana" remix became the first-ever all-female joint record to hit number one on the rap charts.
Despite internally believing her success was inevitable, the reality still stuns her, Ice admits. "I'm shocked that everybody be f**king with me and s**t," she shares.
However, everybody isn't necessarily a fan of the rapper's rapid rise to the top of the charts. While Ice has the approval of her predecessors and her music -- like her iconic February collab with British It girl PinkPantheress, "Boy's a Liar Pt. 2," which reached the number three spot on the Billboard Hot 100 -- are undeniable earworms, there's been controversial commentary that her speedy climb to notoriety has been aided by the hip-hop world's propensity for colorism.
Hip-hop's legacy of fetishization of lighter-toned women has been long-documented, and Ice is only the newest hitmaker to get pulled into the crosshairs of the longstanding conversation.
"I have seen those opinions," Ice tells Teen Vogue. "I feel like that's not something personal to me. I feel like that's been the conversation for generations and forever since the beginning of time. I try not to feed into negativity because I also see that when people are trying to make that point, it's not out of a good place. [They end up putting] somebody else down."
The rapper shares that she "blocks" out most rumors and misconceptions she reads about herself because there's the possibility "anything hurtful could potentially hurt my feelings. Potentially."
"If I do read the comments and see something negative, I'll leave. I'm not torturing myself," she adds. "A lot of the time I know what they're going to say, because the public is mad predictable.... I expect them to just be on my d**k, to be picking at dumb s**t. Like, they didn't need to bring that up."
While she seems to have a handle on how much of the public she wants to see her and what they perceive from her, Ice points out that she doesn't believe anybody is ever "fully prepared for fame."
"There's no book on how to do it. I feel like everybody could just learn as they go, like most people do in their careers," she says. "A lot of people be trying to compare me to people that's way older than me or people that been in this s**t way longer than me. I feel like I know who I am. I'm really that b**ch, and I tell myself that all the time because I learned that I have to.... I got to know who I am because everybody else gon' try to tell me who I am. So I got to know first."
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