Ice Spice opens up about unlikely friendship with Taylor Swift

Ice Spice is gushing about her unexpected friendship with Taylor Swift, dubbing her as her "closest celebrity friend".

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Ice Spice reminisced about the moment her manager called to say Swift wanted to collaborate on a remix of Karma from her album Midnights.

She was in her first New Jersey apartment with producer Riot, working on recordings, when the call came in.

“He usually texts, but he called, and he’s like, ‘You ready for this one?’ And I’m thinking it’s going to be some bad news or something,” the rapper recounted to the publication. 

“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.”

Because the rapper had recently begun to gain popularity, some believed that Swift's collaboration on the bonus track with Ice Spice was an attempt by the "Fortnight" singer to gain influence.

“Which is so rude to me, [because] why would she not want to be my friend?” Ice Spice said. “Taylor f***s with me. She’s so funny. I think our personalities mesh really well.”

When Ice Spice collaborated with Swift on a bonus track, some critics accused Swift of trying to boost her own popularity by associating with the rising rapper.

The rapper found this notion offensive, saying, "Why wouldn't Taylor want to be friends with me? She genuinely likes me, and we have great chemistry."

However, their friendship faced scrutiny again when the Lover singer was linked to Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, in May 2023. Healy had previously faced backlash for laughing along with jokes made about Ice Spice's accent and ethnicity during an interview on The Adam Friedland Show in February 2023.

Although Healy apologised to Ice Spice in person, he later downplayed the controversy, saying it "doesn't actually matter" in an interview with The New Yorker.