Ice Spice‘s reign as one of the year’s hottest acts continues to go from strength to strength as she’s now garnered more Billboard Hot 100 hits than any other artist in 2023.
Chart Data reports that the Bronx rapper has earned the most Top 5 hits this year, scoring big with three chart juggernauts: “Karma” featuring Taylor Swift, which currently sits at No.2 on the chart; “Princess Diana” featuring Nicki Minaj, which peaked at No. 4; and “Boy’s A Liar” featuring PinkPantheress, which topped out at No. 3.
Her wins don’t stop there. Last month it was reported that Ice Spice broke a record held by Nicki Minaj. According to Chart Data, the red-hot Bronx rapper earned the biggest streaming debut for a female rapper in global Spotify history thanks to “Karma.”
The song, which was released on at the end of last month as a bonus track on Swift’s new deluxe album Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition), racked up 5.036 million streams on the platform on its first day. That figure propelled “Karma” to No. 5 on the global Spotify chart, making it the top new entry.
It also helped Ice Spice earn the biggest streaming day of her career on Spotify so far, accounting for almost half of her 10.5 million plays on May 26.
Previously, Nicki Minaj held the record for the biggest streaming debut for a female rap song on Spotify with her chart-topping “Super Freaky Girl,” which opened with 3.021 million streams following its release in August 2022, per Chart Data.
In other Ice Spice news, her manager recently revealed the “Munch” rapper owns the rights to all of her music.
Gracing the May 11 cover of Billboard, the Bronx native and her manager spoke on her business acumen and her rise to fame first bursting onto the scene in August 2022.
Being managed by James Rosemond Jr. – son of famed Hip Hop mogul James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond, who managed The Game, Gucci Mane and more – put Ice Spice in a great position from the start.
“I was privy to a lot of his deal-making, and me being a sponge allowed me to soak up what contracts looked like and how to approach labels,” Rosemond Jr. said. “[Before labels even approached Ice, I told her] ‘Let’s do it ourselves first.’ Deals came to her — production deals, 360 deals — but they were deals that I knew could be better, and in order to get a better deal, you have to go out and do it yourself.”
He then hired a powerhouse entertainment lawyer to help navigate the bidding war that soon emerged, which set the tone for negotiations at a dinner meeting with 10K Records and Capitol Records shortly after the release of “Munch.”
“We wasn’t freestyling it. We had that vision walking in,” Rosemond Jr. said.
In the end, the joint deal they struck allowed Ice Spice to own both her masters and publishing – as well as creative freedom.
No one on the label side touches the music,” said 10K co-president Zach Friedman. “There is no traditional A&R with her. No one’s picking beats, no one’s saying, ‘Do this, do that.’ It’s all her. We’re on her schedule.”
