Ice Spice on the love and hate she’s received since blowing up

Written by ABC Audio. All rights reserved. on April 12, 2023

For some artists, it takes a while to realize the effects of stardom. In Ice Spice‘s case, however, it was only about a few days after she released her now-viral song “Munch (Feelin’ U).”

“I remember I was in the mall and this little group of kids swarmed around me like, ‘Are you the “Munch” girl? Oh my God,'” she says in her cover interview for Paper. “And that was the first week ‘Munch’ had came out. So real shortly after that, that’s when I started to realize my fame was picking up and people was constantly coming up to me.”

With the fame came nightclub appearances, which she’s temporarily brought to a stop. “I started to not want to really perform at clubs as much because it started to feel a little scary performing in a club versus performing on a stage,” Spice explains. The rapper also had the chance to pop out during Fivio Foreign‘s set at Rolling Loud, where she experienced firsthand a less than warm reception.

“I would say I am a critic of myself, but the second other people start to critique me, I instantly become my biggest supporter and I’m like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, not too much,'” she says, adding she’s not interested in figuring out why people like or dislike her.

“I think it’s just a combination of things that makes me who I am, honestly. I can’t really pick myself apart trying to figure out why people are interested in me,” she says. “I just like to focus on having fun and being myself and thinking about what I want to do and not really what other people want me to do.”