In May of 2023, Taylor Swift did a rather sudden collaboration with Ice Spice. While Taylor has worked with rap artists before, the Ice Spice collab felt like Taylor had ulterior motives. Those motives involved Matt Healy, who was Taylor’s boyfriend at the time. You see, months earlier, Healy had said some really racist and disparaging sh-t about Ice Spice, and his comments added to the narrative that Taylor was dickmatized by a racist pig. Taylor’s image-control clapback was: my boyfriend isn’t a racist, because look, I’m doing a collab with Ice Spice! After Taylor and Matt Healy split, she continued to hang out with Ice Spice, and they even went to some of the Kansas City Chiefs’ games together. A performative friendship turned into a real friendship, apparently. Well, Ice Spice covers the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and she addresses the Taylor Swift stuff. RS also spoke to Taylor about why she became friends with Ice Spice.
Don’t mess with Ice Spice and Taylor Swift’s friendship. In a cover story interview with Rolling Stone on Thursday, June 25, the “Deli” rapper (real name Isis Gaston) opened up about how “rude” it is that people think her friendship — and team-up on the “Karma” remix — with the pop megastar was for clout.
“Why would she not want to be my friend?” Ice told the outlet. “Taylor f—s with me. She’s so funny. I think our personalities mesh really well.”
In the story, the 24-year-old hip-hop star recalled finding out that the “Maroon” singer wanted her to work on the “Karma” remix when she was living in her first apartment in New Jersey. At the time, Ice’s producer, RiotUSA, was recording her and she received a call from her manager, which she thought would be “bad news” since “he usually texts.”
“He’s like, ‘Taylor Swift has a record for you to get on from her album.’ I’m playing it cool on the phone. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Super cool.’ And then I hang up the phone and I’m hysterically crying…I’m in my walk-in closet, and I’m like, ‘Bro, this is not real life.’ Riot definitely filmed it. That’ll probably be in a documentary one day.”
Swift also opened up about what she admired about the rising hip-hop star in the cover story.
“I love when I meet a new artist who takes a keen interest in not just the music, but the music industry and how it works,” she said. “I’ve seen how our industry tries to convince artists that they’re better off just being creative and making music and letting the labels and the management do the rest…. Seeing Ice lean into the strategic, financial, and business aspects of her career is really exciting for me. The more artists learn about the inner workings of the music industry, the more power they can have in their creative world. I knew based on the questions she asked and the observations she made that she didn’t just want to be a passenger in her own career. She wanted to be the driver of it.”
I’m fine with Ice Spice standing up for herself and asking: why wouldn’t Taylor want to be my friend? That’s totally valid and a great way for her to respond. The stuff we said about Taylor last year was never a diss to Ice. In fact, I was glad that she was getting the exposure and that Taylor’s damage control was going to lead to Ice Spice getting a much bigger audience and more hype and attention. If Taylor wants to use Ice, then Ice can use her right back. It’s mutually beneficial, and whatever, good for them.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Ice Spice’s IG.
I’ve been lukewarm about her music and I remember Ice Spice supporting Nicki Minaj’s posts when she was attacking Megan Thee Stallion recently. She seems marginally talented at least.
I mean I agree Kaiser. This is a manufactured friendship that both people benefit from. As long as she benefits from it as well and is okay with being used as a prop then that’s her business.
This collab made me sure that TS started with Matty before breaking up with Joe. On January, TS sings at Matty’s show; on Feb, Matty goes on the cursed podcast, on April TS announces the breakup on Matty’s bday. TS & Matty also worked on her Midnights album while Joe was working away previous year. She made sure everything aligned perfectly, looking at the breakup announcement date including Ice Spice collab. She just didn’t foresee the swifties were gonna take control of her narrative and reject Matty completely. At least, Ice Spice got the bag.
This is so dehumanizing. Shes a smart pop star, she’s also a messy and complicated person who went through a difficult breakup of a LTR to a messy intense rebound. Tale as old as time. It doesn’t need to be made into something it wasn’t for whatever conspiracy this is.
lol. This isn’t conspiracy. Considering her fans were sending death threats to Joe because of her marketing of her new album, she made it news. She is self-confessed cheater, but her fans were ready to bury Joe waiting for a cheating song. Even in this blog, the swifties were saying when TTPD is out, Joe will be over. And she didn’t say sh*t. But she was commenting almost same day when fans were speculating about her body. The man, who did nothing wrong, got death threats, SM bullying, AI editing of his videos for almost a year.
Yup.
This is a bit much, first she’s a business woman and neither her or Joe seem to have negative feelings. Plus folklore and evermore is all about them falling apart. Also she didn’t cheat, no one did.
Also not for nothing Taylor is too smart to do this, she knows how it would look and so she wouldn’t have gone near her if she didn’t like her because she knew she’d get comments like it’s just PR.
However, as for the Joe and Taylor thing they were together for a long time and he didn’t want to move forward probably because deep down he knew they weren’t compatible, and so they broke up but some other guy was coming in saying and offering all the things Joe wasn’t and she fell for it even though it wasn’t real- which she says repeatedly in the album and in all notes about the album.
But the people involved all moved on so should fans whether it’s Joe fans like you or Taylor fans.
Ice Spice got this far via being light skinned with a full bum. Her rapping is not great. At all.
But glad that Taylor and her are friends though, no matter how sketchy the start.