A quick heads up, this podcast contains explicit language.

Ice, spice, baby.

I had to do it, I'm sorry.

I'm waiting for weeks.

But also, we didn't have a show last week,

so we need to take a minute to acknowledge one album

that came out last Friday,

the studio debut, whatever you take that to mean these days,

of Bronx rapper Ice Spice, who in case there was any confusion about her age,

titled her album, Y2K, with an exclamation point, don't you forget it?

Sheldon, you wrote a review of this album for NPR that people should just go read, so instead of asking

you how this record is, I kind of want to just briefly understand the circumstances of its arrival because she had such a stellar 2023 as a rising star.

What is the mood around Y2K now that it's finally here?

Yeah, you know, it feels like it came a little bit outside of her window, like we reached Peak Ice Spice and now here's the album after the fact.

There's been a pretty rapid ascent for her into like a threshold of fame that a lot of rappers don't reach in terms of like she

started as a local New York product a sort of Corner Girl Around the Way type personality as the forefront of a little

sub-genre of Brooklyn drill called Sample Drill.

She blows up with Munch. Next thing you know, she's

Taylor Swift's best friend. From there, the hits just kept coming, but it seems as if the music sort of tapered off at a point as her fame kept

rising exponentially and the enthusiasm for the music didn't quite match the trajectory of her celebrity.

So here we are with an album that has come sort of outside of all the hype.

I think if it had released in the middle of 2023, when she was the biggest commodity in

...