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When she emerged with her deadpan, sure-shot flow on 2022's "Munch (Feelin' U)," Ice Spice planted her flag as drill music's next torchbearer. A subgenre predicated on hard-nosed beats, sugary samples and slippery flows, drill was largely front-lined by male rappers (the late Pop Smoke, Fivio Foreign) until Spice crashed in, injecting it straight into pop music's aorta thanks to co-signs from and hits with Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj.
Success came quickly for the then-22-year-old, who infused colloquialisms from her native Bronx and Gen Z meme culture into nimble anthems produced by her musical co-pilot RiotUSA. Songs like "Deli" and "In Ha Mood" struck the right equilibrium between street and pop sensibility -- just hard enough for rap purists, softened around the edges for broader appeal -- and set the table for what was leaning toward a mainstream breakthrough with her debut album.
Spice doesn't fully stick the landing on "Y2K!," instead opting to crawl deeper into the safest, darkest corners of drill. There's no surprise Swift collaboration or candy-striped beats on the 10-track set, only pummeling, opaque instrumentation and braggadocious rhymes. Spice has faced criticism for her willingness to embrace pop stardom so readily in a genre where authenticity is tied to how closely you adhere to its core tenets. Accusations of selling out are often lobbed at those who play on the conventions of a genre without respecting its architecture, and Spice earning a Grammy nomination in a pop category this year didn't help her cause.
"Y2K!" appears to address just that, at least musically, across its 23 minutes and 18 seconds (somehowa minute shorter than the deluxe edition of last year's "Like..?" EP), with sniping tracks that center Spice's talents as both a serious rapper and a personality. The laid-back, confident tone that granted levity to select tracks on "Like..?" peeks out on "Y2K!," whose title references her birthday (she was born on Jan. 1, 2000). The single "Think U the Shit (Fart)" is as intentionally crass as it is perplexingly catchy -- "Think you the shit, bitch? You not even the fart," she chants on the chorus -- while "Gimme a Light" leans on the classic hip-hop trope of sampling decades-old hits (in this case, a Sean Paul single) to evoke an air of familiarity.
Spice shouldn't have to try so hard to prove why she rose above the fray so fast, and some of the best moments on "Y2K!" occur when she approximates the formula that got her to this point. "TTYL" touts a galloping vitality -- she sounds like she's rapping in italics -- while "BB Belt" is the spiritual cousin to "Deli" with its urgent, windswept instrumental and play on meter: "Lightskin but I'm Black you can tell by my hair / I get money, bitch I am a millionaire / Walk in the party, everybody gon' stare / If I ain't the one, why the fuck am I here?" she raps, pausing after each line to let the bar sink in.
But those are fleeting moments on an album that already doesn't give enough. "Y2K!" is front-loaded with blank and traditional drill songs ("Oh Shhh ...," featuring Travis Scott; "Bitch I'm Packin'" with Gunna). Yet Spice's versatility -- she's equally at home on a twinkling PinkPantheress single and on an X-rated Cash Cobain cut -- takes a back seat to telling, not showing, that her roots are still intact. It's easy to walk away from "Y2K!" wowed by her Bronx-bred talents, but it's just as confounding that somehow, she's right back where she started.
