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Born and bred in the Bronx borough of New York City, American rapper Ice Spice has come a long way since rapping her first string. Fresh from a collaboration with Taylor Swift, where she added her distinctive look and voice to the singer’s Karma, the Capricorn native is ready to take the world by storm. Get to know Ice Spice, from her real name and her first musical triumphs to her net worth, cars, and her new house in New Jersey.
One year since releasing her debut EP Like..?, American rapper Ice Spice has found fame and global success. Born on January 1 2000, Ice Spice, whose real name is Isis Naija Gaston, has called the Bronx borough of New York City home for much of her life. Raised in the Fordham Road neighbourhood, she is the eldest of five children with immigrant parents. Her mother, Charina Almanzar, is Dominican; while her father Joseph Gaston has African-American roots.
While Ice Spice’s parents would eventually separate when she was two years old, they continued to live within the same neighbourhood. This allowed the singer to maintain her familial bonds, which extended beyond her nuclear family. She also spent much of her childhood with her grandparents and cousins.
As a teenager, Ice Spice attended Catholic Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers. Embarking upon tertiary education thereafter, she attended the State University of New York at Purchase. There, she studied communications and played as a defence specialist on the school’s volleyball team, where she made huge moves and even bigger plays, racking up two kills and nine digs in the 2018 season.
Despite her success on the team, Ice Spice eventually dropped out, expressing her belief that the school was not the right fit for her.
Fate, it would seem, had bigger plans for the budding musician.
By the time she was seven years old, Ice Spice had become deeply enamoured with the beat and culture of hip-hop. She shares her childhood love of music with her father, who had once worked as an underground rapper.
Through his musical tastes, which greatly influenced her own, she discovered Jay-Z, the Wu-Tang Clan, and 50 Cent, who were mainstays in her playlists alongside tracks from her idols Lil’ Kim and Nicki Minaj.
The strength of her bond with her father would go on to influence more than just her taste for rap. In an interview with Paper Magazine, Ice Spice shared that her father’s musical career inspired her own from a young age, saying, “He definitely inspired me to want to record.”
Reminiscing on her early induction into hip-hop, the singer spoke about spending time in the studio with her father, who had a habit of breaking out into freestyle around the house before putting her on the spot to respond with lines of her own. “I remember little flashes. Of course, not every detail, but small things like that being shown to you at such a young age make an impression on you.”
And make an impression, it did. A music lover and a true savant of hip-hop, Gaston welcomed his daughter into his world with open arms. “I ended up becoming an artist because I saw my father be one first,” She shared.
How Ice Spice came to be
While her earliest career inspirations (and aspirations) came from her father, Ice Spice credits Trinidadian rapper and singer Nicki Minaj for helping her to set her sights on the ultimate prize: Becoming a female rapper worthy of worldwide success. “When I saw Nicki, I was so mesmerised. She’s the first female rapper that I’ve seen,” she shared. “And ever since then, I was kinda set on what I wanted to be.”
Her breakthrough into the world of rap had been a long time coming. As a young woman, she typed out the lyrics from the songs of her idols on the Notes app of her iPhone. Then, accompanied by hip-hop instrumentals, she rapped out loud to them. Her stage name had been set when she was a 14-year-old freshman in high school.
Speaking to Elle, Ice Spice shared that ‘ice’ had been a nickname fashioned from her real name, Isis. “I chose Ice Spice because it literally rhymes. Plus I love spicy food. I put hot sauce on everything.”
A Gen-Z native, the story of Ice Spice’s success is the perfect rags-to-riches tale for one of her generation. Despite being made fun of in her childhood for her unique look and mellow, velvety voice, Ice Spice has nonetheless come out on top, enjoying a meteoric rise to fame. And as most Gen-Z influencers do, Ice Spice did it by being smart, active, and relatable on social media.
Her first taste of fame came in January 2021, when her rendition of Erica Banks’ Buss It challenge went viral on TikTok. Following her discovery, she met with record producer RIOTUSA, who went on to produce her debut song Bully Freestyle.
In August 2022, she released Munch (Feelin’ U) on TikTok. Within four months, the track had gone viral, garnering 100k video uses and 600k audio uses. Outside of TikTok, the song also gained traction, making waves in mainstream media by charting on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Bubbling Under Hot 100 — even getting a shoutout from Drake, who played it on his radio station Sirius XM.
In 2023, Ice Spice released her debut EP Like..?, a six-track project executively produced by RIOTUSA. While unexpected, the surprise drop, which was announced mere hours before its release, was largely celebrated as a success and peaked at Number 37 on the Billboard 200 and on Number 19 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
Following the critical acclaim of her album, Ice Spice was presented with the dream collaboration: the chance to produce a remix with her childhood idol, Nicki Minaj. Together, the duo released a remixed version of Princess Diana, which went on to hit Number 4 on the Hot 100. Most recently, Ice Spice once again partnered up with Minaj for a remix of Barbie Girl for Greta Gerwig’s award-winning Margot Robbie starrer Barbie (2023).
Karma is a collaboration with Taylor Swift
Perhaps the most significant feather in the singer’s cap is her 2023 collaboration with Eras tour headliner Taylor Swift. The duo first met after Ice Spice watched Swift’s Netflix documentary, Miss Americana (2020).
In an interview with Variety, she shared, “My manager heard me talking about that and had reached out to her team, and then they had a song for me.”
The song in question was Midnights banger Karma, an upbeat, disco synth-pop track that speaks of thriving in the face of one’s haters. Following the track’s release, Ice Spice would also appear in Swift’s corresponding music video, painting a stirring visual of strong women in power.
Dazzling in a crimson sequinned two-piece outfit, the rapper delivered her lines with inimitable ease, perched atop a golden seashell and likewise, on top of the world.
Since then, Ice Spice has become a mainstay in Swift’s iconic squad of friends, with the former appearing as a surprise guest on stage for the latter’s Eras tour stop in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.
Speaking to The Guardian, the rapper shared that she and Swift talk ‘all the time’, and they have been spotted together at numerous events — most notably the 2023 MTV VMAs, and again at the recent Super Bowl.
The net worth of Ice Spice, and the expensive things she owns
Just a few short years into her career, Ice Spice has already amassed an impressive net worth of USD 8 million. While this is a far cry from the staggering net worths of other musicians and singers, the success of Ice Spice is still at its infancy, and the star is expected to further grow her career in coming years.
Given the critical success of her musical releases, a good assumption is that she has received considerable earnings in return.
Beyond making her millions in net worth, Ice Spice has also embarked on the pleasurable task of spending it. Most notable among her assets are her cars, which include a Chevrolet Camaro and a Cadillac Escalade.
According to unconfirmed reports, Ice Spice is also the proud owner of a drop-top Mercedes Maybach G650 London, which is worth over USD 550,000. There is no official confirmation as to Ice Spice’s ownership of the car; however, it has appeared in the music video for her collaborative track with Pop Smoke, London.
Ice Spice recently moved away from the Bronx, and now lives in New Jersey. Though she has yet to make the details of her new home public, it is safe to assume that the property makes up a significant portion of her assets.
(Main and featured image: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for MTV)
