This year at the VMAs, Gaston (who goes by ) was one of the most vivid parts of the Sept. 12 show: You couldn’t avoid seeing her, even if you didn’t watch MTV. Seated next to Taylor Swift — who’d tapped her for a remix of “Karma” that dropped in May — Ice was one of the night’s most magnetic stars, outfitted in a custom white Dolce & Gabbana lace cutout dress that nodded to Britney Spears’ 2003 VMA fit by way of Madonna. She wasn’t dressed like that because she remembered the girl-on-girl kiss that remains the long-running show’s most indelible moment (she was only three), but rather because she Googled “VMA outfits” for inspiration. Memes of the new besties — Ice Spice and Tay — dominated social media, thanks in part to a camera that was fixed on Swift the entire night.
Ice knows where she came from and wears her hometown stripes proud. So it was appropriate to feel miffed when a podcaster dissed her about moving on from her roots. “They were like, ‘Nah, Spice’s past New York.’ And I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I’m born and raised in the Bronx. How am I past anything? That doesn’t sense to me. Bitch, just because I spent $100,000 in Chanel doesn’t mean I’m no longer from New York. Like, hello?”
Her singular style is part of the draw — “I’m not a regular artist,” she proclaims on “Deli” — and she’s keen to develop it into a brand. She explains that she arrived late to the interview because she’d made an impromptu stop at a Dunkin’ Donuts, with which she just partnered for one of her first major deals. (“I’m not a huge coffee person,” she says while relating this story.) Wearing an 80-carat diamond Eliantte necklace that reads “Munchkins,” she sampled her freshly released Ice Spice Munchkins Drink, a milkshake-like blend that sippers are encouraged to top with doughnut holes. She instructs actor Ben Affleck to do just that in a commercial that debuted during the MTV Video Music Awards.
Now, her label regularly feels the Ice Spice burn. “I would say I receive beats, session ideas, questions for Ice more than any artist that I work with. It’s an inundation on a daily basis,” says Jeremy Vuernick, president of A&R at Capitol, who chalks her success up to that intangible “It” factor. “It’s one of those things that’s super hard to describe, but I refer to it sometimes as gravity — where you sit down in a room and you’re pulled directly to that artist. All the air is sucked out when they walk in the room, and your eyes are drawn.”
She has largely avoided publicity issues, namely by following her own advice on “Deli”: “Too much to lose, so I cannot react.” But she did find herself embroiled in a controversy — not by her own hand — when Matty Healy, lead singer of the 1975 (who briefly dated Swift earlier this year), appeared on the podcast “The Adam Friedland Show” in February. The hosts made racist comments about Ice, who is of Dominican and Nigerian descent, and mimicked her, using stereotypical accents. “Yeah, that’s what Ice Spice is like,” said Healy, who also referred to her as “dumb” while recalling the time he tried to message her on Instagram. A backlash ensued, the podcast was removed from streaming services and Healy apologized onstage two months later during a show in New Zealand.
