“Y2K!” the debut studio album from New York rapper Ice Spice, is 24 minutes of hard-hitting drilled beats and rapping about butts.
Released on July 26, the album has 10 tracks, none of which are over 3 minutes long. Travis Scott, Gunna and Central Cee are all featured on the album.
A lack of stylistic variety makes many of the songs sound the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Fans of Ice Spice will surely find something to enjoy from the album with drill rap and pop music.
Anybody else, though, will likely find it repetitive and boring.
Ice Spice raps about her body and success in her signature low and slow tune on every single track, often coming across as if she is trying to sound lazy.
“You just gotta know I’m bad with a lot of ass,” she raps on “Plenty Sun.”
Pretty much every other bar on “Y2K!” is a variation of that line.
Although not particularly clever, her lyrics are, at worst, inoffensive and, at best, pretty funny. There is feces-related wordplay on multiple tracks.
On “BB Belt,” Ice Spice raps, “I’m Ms. Poopie, but I never smell,” and on “Gimme A Light” she calls herself Ms. Poopie again, rapping “I’m Ms. Poopie like I need a diaper.” Of course, she also raps about poop on the viral hit “Think U the Shit (Fart).”
Some of the songs are pretty catchy, provided you do not mind a little repetition. At the end of the intro track “Phat Butt,” she repeats the line “Fat butt, pull my pants up” 18 times in a row, reminiscent of the Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.”
RiotUSA, Ice Spice’s longtime producer, produced the entire album and it shows. The album is full of Jersey-club-influenced drill beats that are synonymous with Ice Spice’s music.
The pounding bass drums of Jersey club music, the distorted and warped 808s of drill music and the repetitive snares and hi-hats of trap are featured throughout the album, lacking versatility, just like the vocals. Despite an absence of variation, the beats feature some creative sampling and sound tailor-made for Ice Spice’s carefree, club-friendly raps.
“Popa” and “Plenty Sun” have some of the best beats on the album, with instrumentals that sound heavily influenced by early Chief Keef mixtapes produced by drill pioneers Young Chop and DJ Scream.
Surprisingly, some songs on “Y2K!” feature creative sample flips, which make them stand out from the other copy-and-paste drill songs Ice Spice has made.
“Gimme A Light” features a sample from “Gimme The Light” by dancehall superstar Sean Paul, making it sound unique despite its drums sounding exactly like any other New York drill song. A dreamy vocal sample of singer Lily Kaplan is used on the cheating anthem “Did it First,” a collaboration with British Rapper Central Cee that has sparked relationship rumors between the two rappers.
Central Cee’s verse is one of the three guest verses featured on the album, and the only guest verse remotely noteworthy. Rappers Travis Scott and Gunna lend their Dirty-South vocal deliveries to the cookie-cutter drill tracks “Oh Shhh…” and “Bitch I’m Packin’.”
As an album, “Y2K!” is a forgettable drill record that makes you wonder how Ice Spice managed to receive four nominations at last year’s Grammy Awards. However, there are some bright moments throughout the album that unpretentious listeners will appreciate.
The album is less than half an hour long, so listening to it is not a huge waste of time. It is probably not worth listening to multiple times though. You will likely hear these tracks in clubs and on top 40 radio stations well into next year.
