Rory & Mal debated with their co-host whether or not Ice Spice’s success is owed to the music industry’s colorism.
During the latest episode of New Rory & MAL, co-host Demaris mentioned people claiming colorism for the reason the “Princess Diana” artist was invited to the Met Gala by Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour. She then followed up and asserted that the Bronx artist has “no talent.”
“If we saying that colorism doesn’t exist because a dark-skinned girl could never soar the way that f**king Ice Spice did off having zero to no talent,” she argued.
Rory followed up, shocked, asking, “Ice Spice has no talent? I think she’s a talented person, rap wouldn’t be it, but there’s a talent there,” he added.
Demaris then disclosed that she isn’t a big fan of her music and insisted that she wasn’t “hating” on the “Munch” rapper. Demaris then added that if she were of a darker complexion, her level of success wouldn’t be the same.
“If she was dark-skinned, she would not be as big as she is,” she continued. “That’s what I said. That’s not taking anything away from her.”
Mal then chimed in, comparing Spice’s glow-up to Cardi B. “I just wanna know what’s the difference between the way they push Ice Spice and the way they pushed Cardi B?”
“Cardi has been entertaining to watch, perform, and rap since the very beginning, Ice Spice isn’t very entertaining,” D responded.
The episode went viral just days after Cardi took to Instagram to explain how industry politics work—specifically with female rappers. The Invasion of Privacy entertainer explained that audiences are getting more of a certain artist because they have the most engagement.
“The record labels are putting money behind the girls that people listening to,” she said. “As a result, different artists are coming up faster than others. The labels only go with who’s getting the most listens, who are getting the most plays, who are people watching more. You can not blame nobody for that, you can’t blame no machine for that. You can’t blame nothing for that. Labels are only going to put money behind artists that people are listening to.”
“You can’t hate on nobody else’s come up,” she added. “‘Cause everybody going to be like, ‘Huh, the label’s putting more money behind this…’ They do analytics. Whoever the people are listening to, they’re going to put money behind it.”