Women in Music 2024
Just after performing a fascinating salsa version of “Amargura,” Karol G took center stage at YouTube Theater on Wednesday (March 6) to accept her award for Woman of the Year at the 2024 Billboard Women in Music Awards.
Colombian actor and producer Sofía Vergara presented Karol — who made her acting debut alongside Vergara in Netflix’s Griselda earlier this year — with the special award.
Here’s Karol’s full speech, with everything after the first paragraph translated from Spanish to English.
“First of all, it’s an amazing surprise that Sofía Vergara is giving me this award, I love it. Buenas noches a todos. I’m super honored to be here today. Oh my God, [this] might be the most significant and important recognition of all my career, this is super special. This is Woman of the Year but this is the first time ever a Latina is named the Woman of the Year. So, I have to give my speech in Spanish, of course.
“Well, this is Women in Music so I’m going to talk about us. I have to start first by telling you that for years and years I lived very disappointed with the fact of being a woman. I found myself on the road with so many rejections and so many lost opportunities. Because of that, I wondered why I was not born a man to exploit all this love, this desire and passion I felt for music. Where would all this desire I had to eat the world have gone if it was assumed that as a woman I could not achieve it? For a long time I believed that story. I believed that this was not for me. So many times I was told that I could not make it and I always think of the number of people who leave their dreams behind and leave their dreams aside for that reason, for the perception of others but not for the real dream they have and the desire they have inside. In the midst of my desire, in the midst of wanting to make music even if it was just for me, I decided that if my environment did not change, I was the one who had to change and I was the one who was going to do it. And that I wasn’t going to let being a woman be an obstacle or define my capabilities, but that it was going to be my strength, it was going to be my motive and my reason. And every time I was told no, I found the strength and the desire and everything I needed to say, yes I can. In my mind I changed the ‘a woman can’t do it’ to ‘look at this woman how she does it, look how a woman does it.’
“Three fundamental things happened in order for me to be here tonight. One, I stopped trying to be perfect for everyone. I accepted myself as a person, actually it was something that took me a long time, to accept myself as a woman, as a person, to stop hiding the things that for people were a defect and that probably now are all my qualities. Number two, I completely ignored and still completely ignore the comments of, ‘she owes it to this one,’ or ‘it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for this person’ or ‘because she recorded with this other one,’ or ‘she did it because she gave it to that one.’ The eagerness to find justifications for the achievements and successes of a woman, mmm no. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone when you know how much you have killed yourself to achieve everything you have achieved in life. And number three, I understood that it was not the respect of others that I had to earn but respect for myself. To work hard to the point where I could see myself and admire the person I had become. Studying, working, working on my voice, being clear about what I wanted to communicate. How I wanted to connect with people, improve my lyrics, spend many hours in the studio. To really prepare myself to be the best and when I would see myself, I would say, wow, she’s tough, how great, and that’s the respect you have to look for.
“I look back now, all the time it has taken me to be here, 16 years, and I feel very at peace with myself because I followed my heart, [you] follow your heart. I see the process, I wouldn’t take anything away. All the things, from the most beautiful to the most difficult, I am grateful today and they have made me the person I am. I don’t see pain, I see a lot of opportunities created, I see learning, I see goals achieved and a lot of hearts inspired. That is the coolest award I can receive, I love you. Really, thank you.
“Today, as I receive this award, I want to say [to myself] Karol G you’re incredible, congratulations. This is not only for me. I want to thank all the people, all the women who also work every day, who also open a path that we are not aware of, all those who have been working. To the women who work in my team, there are a lot of them. And to the women who are coming in the future, who are also working very hard already. I didn’t want to stand here and say all the things that I have done, I’m really just standing here to say that just like I did, all of you can do it too. And never, never give someone else the authority to decide on your own decisions, to say whether something you are doing is bad or good, has value or has no value. No one can put value on you as a person, not as a woman, not as a professional. It is you yourself who works for it, sweats for it, gets it and earns it. And, how chimba [great] that they gave me [the award] this year. Thank you, Billboard, I love you all.”
A barefoot Karol G performed a riveting salsa version of “Amargura” at Billboard Women in Music on Wednesday (March 6) at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. And, as she promised during her interview with Billboard on the red carpet, her performance got people on their feet dancing along with her — including Katy Perry.
“Hi, everyone! For this special night I chose what I think is the favorite song of all of you, my fans,” Karol said speaking into a microphone stand that had a Colombian flag wrapped around it. “Not the most popular, but I know it’s your favorite. I brought so many talented girls with me to do a special version that represents my roots and my Latin community, and I want everyone to enjoy it.”
Wearing a white flowy two-piece that encouraged her free-spirited performance, Karol sang live and danced up a storm with an all-girl salsa band (13 musicians in total) in tow, including Emily Estefan (Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s daughter) on percussion. The women in the band were also dressed in white, many wearing the long, traditional Colombian cumbia skirts. Karol’s salsa number was arranged and produced by Sergio George along with her longtime musical director Rob Trujillo.
Karol G — who received the Woman of the Year Award – closed out the ceremony, which also included performances by Victoria Monet, NewJeans, Maren Morris, Young Miko and more.
It’s not the first time Karol was honored at Billboard Women in Music. In 2022, the Colombian hitmaker received the Rulebreaker award and performed “El Barco.” Since then, Karol has had a year of career-defining moments, including a history-making album (Mañana Será Bonito), became the first Latina to ever embark on a stadium tour in the United States, headlined Lollapalooza and, most recently, won her first Grammy.
“I’m super honored to be here today,” Karol said after accepting her Woman of the Year award from Sofía Vergara. “Oh my God, it might be the most significant and important recognition of all my career, this is super special.”
Watch Karol G’s performance above, and her acceptance speech below:
Kylie Minogue may have been a star for nearly 40 years now, but the Billboard Women in Music Awards on Wednesday evening (March 6) nonetheless represented a first for the generations-spanning pop idol.
After successfully scaling the stairs leading up to the YouTube Theater stage (sideways, thanks to a tight-fitting dress) to accept the Icon Award from presenter Bebe Rexha at the ceremony, Minogue kicked off her speech by noting the unusual nature of the evening in the scope of her decades-long career.
“I love being in this room, and it’s ridiculous to say, but I’ve never been in a room like this — a pure and vital celebration of women in music, and I’ve been one for 37 years,” she said. “So it is especially nice to be here and so wonderful to be in your company.”
While the award came amid the success of Minogue’s smash single “Padam Padam” — which marks her biggest hit in the United States in more than two decades — the singer aptly kept the focus on her status as a long-running icon, beginning with her 1987 hit “The Loco-Motion” (still her highest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 3) to her No. 7-charting Hot 100 smash “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” in 2001 and her latest chart success.
“On the one hand, it seems completely surreal. Like, ‘Is this really happening? How did I get here?’” she said of receiving the honor. “And then on the other hand, simultaneously, I know the steps it took to get here physically and mentally. Navigating the highs, the lows, and then trying to never lose sight of the in-between, the terra firma. I also know there’s luck, fate, a calling and help — a lot of help from a lot of people over a very long time in my case.”
Speaking of the lows, in ending her speech, Minogue made a special “shout-out to all the times that were not peak moments. They were no fun. But those challenges, the lows, the stuff we’ve gotta get through sometimes, I wanted to give a big shout-out to all the terrible times. Thank you for teaching us. They were horrendous in the moment, but they happen, and it’s how we navigate them and what we do with them. I’m not looking forward to the next one, but it will come.”
Stream the Billboard Women in Music 2024 Awards here at 8 p.m. ET Thursday (March 7).
Tems might claim she’s “Not an Angel” in her latest single, but she sure looked like one Wednesday night (March 6) when she performed it at Billboard Women in Music.
The Nigerian singer-songwriter and producer took the stage at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, Calif., cloaked in a white bedazzled hooded dress, the smoke billowing from underneath her acting as a long, flowing train. “Not an Angel” is one of two singles Tems released last year, arriving two months after “Me & U.” In her Women in Music profile, she assured her highly anticipated debut album “is 1,000% coming out this year.”
Following her peformance, Tems accepted the Breakthrough Award from Savannah James, who said that Future‘s Grammy-winning Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Wait for U,” featuring Drake and Tems, is her “personal favorite.” Tems said she had prepared a speech for the evening, but “I have forgotten everything completely,” she admitted before one fan screeched, “You’re the best!” and more applause followed. “One thing that’s uniquely special to me is that I’m in a room full of amazing women and I’m standing with a continent behind me, I’m standing with the people behind me, and it makes me feel like I’m part of something just being in this room.”
Tems dedicated her award to “the first woman I ever met,” her mother, who broke with Yoruba tradition by choosing her daughter’s name Témìládè Openiyi — a role typically reserved for the father’s side of the family — because “God told me,” Tems’ mother explained on For Broken Ears’ “Témìládè Interlude.“
Growing up, “everybody just called me Temi. Nobody really called me by my full name. It wasn’t something that was on my mind,” Tems previously told Billboard. “It’s only now, as an adult, that I started realizing that it meant ‘the crown is mine.’ I think that’s really powerful. It feels manifested, based on how my life has gone.“
“I really want to use this opportunity to say to all the women in the room, in the world, that no matter what you’re going through, you should know you’re not alone. So even when you’re sad, even when you’re angry, there’s someone that’s angry, too. So uplift everybody around you because they need that like you and somebody’s there for you,” she concluded her speech. “It’s the women that got the women, trust me.”
On Wednesday night (March 6), Luísa Sonza captivated audiences with a sweet rendition of “Chico,” debuting its English version interlaced with some original Portuguese lyrics. This tender bossa nova was performed for the first time in English at the 2024 Billboard Women In Music Awards, held at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, Calif.
Clad in a chic black vest and matching low-rise slacks — her blond hair stylishly tied back into a ponytail and her lips painted a striking red — the Brazilian music sensation gracefully shifted from her mellifluous tune to a more vibrant performance. Backed by blazing images on screens, the energy in the room surged when Demi Lovato made a surprise appearance, joining Sonza onstage for their “Penhasco2” duet. This collaboration added an unforgettable flair to the evening, creating a mesmerizing moment with the night’s honored Global Force.
Sonza made history as the only Brazilian artist honored at the event.
“What the f— is happening here, guys? Oh my God!” Sonza said as she received her award. “First of all, thank you Demi Lovato for [joining] me. I’m a Brazilian singer, I mostly sing in Portuguese, so this is so crazy, and I’m so nervous right now.”
Then she continued to read her speech: “First of all, I wanna say thank you to the woman who inspired me in my life, my mom. I wanna say thank you to my grandma, my manager Fátima, and everyone on my team who makes being here possible. This is crazy. I’m from a small town in Brazil with 6,000 people, and I started my music journey singing in a wedding band when I was 7 years old, and I never, never thought I would be here tonight.
“Even here, this is too much for me, I can’t handle,” she added in amusement. “Thank you so much, Billboard, for seeing and recognizing women, this is amazing, this is so important. But tonight, I want to say thank you, especially to Brazilian women, this is the first time someone from Brazil is being recognized for this award. So I want to dedicate this award to Brazilian artists, songwriters and producers, thank you so much. Karol G, a songwriter, all my fans, ¡Muito obrigado, Brasil! And this is just the beginning.”
The new English version of “Chico” officially premieres Thursday (March 7) across all streaming platforms.
Watch Luísa Sonza and Demi Lovato perform onstage together at Billboard Women In Music above and her acceptance speech below.
In addition to the many female artists and executives honored at the Billboard Women in Music Awards this year, several women have been selected by Billboard outlets around the world to receive recognition as Global Forces in the industry. Spanning Argentina, Brazil, China, Georgia, Italy and the Philippines, these visionaries are singers, songwriters, instrumentalists and producers […]
Since PinkPantheress started uploading her music to TikTok three years ago, her songs have gone from locked away on her hard drive to the Billboard charts — but the singer, songwriter and producer’s recording essentials remain the same: microphone, GarageBand-outfitted laptop and a killer ear for finding niche samples primed for her to mold into the next dance-pop earworm.
The 22-year-old from Bath, England, may have started enlisting fellow producers to help polish her work, as on her recent album Heaven Knows, but make no mistake: From her early viral single “Pain” to her 2023 hit “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2” with Ice Spice, PinkPantheress has been the creative mastermind. In fact, the self-described perfectionist — whose team lovingly refers to her as “Pink” in lieu of divulging her real name — admits that she often finds herself seizing control of her studio sessions with collaborators.
“As soon as I’m at a point where I can’t do anything else, that’s where I go, ‘OK, now can you do the rest?’ ” she says of her process, laughing. “It ends up being a collaborative thing. I just like to get what I can do out of the way first.” When she comes across another artist’s track that she can’t stop obsessing over, that usually means it’s about to become the skeleton of her next project. “I’m just like, ‘I need to somehow make this my song,’ ” she says.
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She can recall only one time that she had to ax a track because she couldn’t get a sample — the original producer’s royalties demands were simply too high. But Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Producer of the Year knew that what she brought to the table on her own was valuable — something that might inspire young girls who also want to make music — so she walked away.
“For whatever reason, I’ve always felt strongly about that,” she says of her sense of self-worth. “Obviously, it’s a good thing.”
Billboard’s last Producer of the Year honoree, Rosalía, gave you a shoutout during her Women in Music interview. Which female producers inspire you?
That’s really sweet. I didn’t know she knew who I was. Since she’s a [female] producer as well, it’s really cool. There’s obviously not many of us. I’m always going to say WondaGurl, just because she’s who I looked up to when I was starting. Obviously, Imogen Heap, but these are all veterans. I need to tap into more up-and-coming ones.
Sampling has been your bread and butter from the start. How has your process changed over time?
At the beginning, I wasn’t really adding anything to my samples. I was basically just singing over instrumentals. I didn’t mind sampling, but I didn’t like how people… I think people thought it was lazy, and part of me understood what they meant. I’m chopping them, speeding them up or slowing them down way more. I’m adding more instrumentation so it’s more hidden, whereas before it would kind of just be the actual track itself.
Lia Clay Miller
You’ve said before that some of your songs are “crap.” Do you really think that?
I’m one of those people who, in my whole life, nothing is ever good enough. For better or worse, this is just how I am. I’ll put out a song and think at the time, “This is 100% amazing.” It’s only when I’ve put it out that I doubt myself. Does that mean I think the song’s actually bad? No. Because at the end of the day, I know it’s still a bop.
What advice do you have for other female producers trying to hold their own in the industry?
It’s the vibe you go in with that people judge to see if they can get away with stuff. If you know what you want to make as soon as you step into the room, there should be nothing stopping you from actually doing it. What I’m saying is, if there’s a MIDI keyboard there, ask to use the MIDI keyboard. If [other producers] say no, then that’s wild and definitely leave. But chances are, they’ll say yes.
This story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Maren Morris wrote her first song as a preteen and says she knew, from that point on, that she wanted to be a singer. She long envisioned an equitable industry, particularly in country music, where she launched her career. But recently — after a particularly trying year in which headlines declared (not entirely accurately) that she was leaving country behind — the 33-year-old says she discovered something important: what she doesn’t want to do.
“What I’ve learned is that it’s not my job to inform everybody all the time about what I’m feeling,” Morris says, speaking from her Nashville home. “I want to talk and explain less and let the music speak for me, which was the whole point of getting into this in the first place.”
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Morris released her major-label debut, Hero, in 2016, featuring the breakout single “My Church,” for which she won her first Grammy (for best country solo performance). In 2018, she scored a crossover dance-pop smash with Zedd and Grey on “The Middle” — her first and only Billboard Hot 100 top 10 — and in 2019 released her acclaimed second album, Girl, which spawned her first Hot Country Songs No. 1, “The Bones.” That same year, she formed supergroup The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires. And while Morris earned her first best country album Grammy nod with 2022’s Humble Quest, she’s most proud of last year’s two-song EP The Bridge.
Both EP tracks — the chilling “The Tree” and rallying “Get the Hell Out of Here” — connect her past of passionately speaking up for underrepresented voices in country music to her future of quietly speaking up for herself. “They were conceived in a moment of great reflection and heartbreak and loss and a little bit of grief and PTSD — all the things,” Morris says. (She finalized her divorce from singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd, with whom she has a young son, in February.) “They’re definitely a part of an important conversation that I was having with myself and my existence here in Nashville. They sonically sum up my last decade. I think it was a nice chapter close.”
Now Billboard‘s 2024 Women in Music Visionary feels lighter — and more excited — than ever as she embarks upon writing her next chapter, which she’ll do under Columbia New York rather than the label’s Nashville outpost she has long called home. “I’m just compulsively being creative right now,” she says. “This weighted blanket of burden has been lifted.”
Munachi Osegbu
You recently teased new music on Instagram, writing that you’re “barfing up [your] heart.”
Yes. That’s the new album title: Heart Barf.
If not that, what phrase defines 2023 for you?
I’m going to sound so Pinterest, but I think just letting go. Or changeover. I feel like I’m on this precipice of massive, massive change. And the music’s certainly reflecting that. In 2024, not that I’ve got an album done yet, but by the week [it’s] getting clearer and clearer what the theme and the sonics are. I’m not overthinking. I’m not trying to be micromanage-y like I typically am.
How does The Bridge represent that shift?
They are two of my proudest songs as a writer because as real and gritty and personal as I have gotten in past years, I don’t know if I’ve ever been quite as vulnerable as I had with those two. And it wasn’t comfortable to write them or to even release them or do any of the creative. Everything in that was a good green light that I was on the road to whatever is next.
You worked with Jack Antonoff on “Get the Hell Out of Here.” How did you two get together?
We met a year or two ago, and we were just fans of each other’s artistry and, obviously, on my end, his production of all my favorite artists. We’ve been writing a lot this year.
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Given his work with The Chicks and Taylor Swift — women who have had similar experiences in country music — what common ground did that create?
I think the background of what those women had gone through before me was … he was the perfect guy to feel trusting and safe with that sort of song. And then with “The Tree,” Greg Kurstin, whom I’ve worked with on my last two records, we have such a familiarity with one another. I love both of those guys so much. I feel like both of their résumés are so musically unbound — I’ve been pretty all over the map with songs of my own, but when you choose a producer, you’re hoping that they have the same melting pot of influences and don’t care about genre.
What artists do you admire for seamlessly navigating different genres?
Miley Cyrus comes to mind first. She’s got one of those voices, and her creative influences are clearly so vast. I mean, just look at the diversity of her albums — it’s almost Madonna-esque, where every album is a new genre or era, because she can do pop, she can do country, and then the Dead Petz record. And then obviously, my heroes: Dolly Parton really broke down barriers of genre with “Islands in the Stream” and “Here You Come Again” and was criticized for doing so at the time because it was like, “She’s leaving country. Dolly goes pop.” Taylor [Swift is a] huge chameleon. And then Sheryl Crow as well.
What genre do you see as the closest to getting it right in terms of inclusivity and representation?
They all have room to grow. [But] just in terms of worldwide reach and really being dominated by women, pop music. It’s kind of a cool Wild West because pop music can be anything: It can be Ariana Grande, it can be Taylor, it could be Noah Kahan. So I do like the freedom of that. Music is headed in a very interesting direction. The album of the year nominees for the Grammys, women dominated. I would hope that country music eventually does the same. Because when you have everyone’s stories, the music is better, and it ushers in younger artists and songwriters and musicians to want to move to Nashville, to want to make music here. It’s interesting to see people go to pop or pop labels [who came] through country.
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You said recently you got sick of being a “yes” person. What have you joyfully said “no” to?
In the beginning, I felt this massive sense of pride when I would send an email back and just be like, “No. Pass.” But now I’ve gotten so much better at setting a boundary that it doesn’t feel like a win or a loss. And the threat of that is always, “Well, she’s a diva.” But I hope I lead by example: You don’t ever have to be a b-tch, but you can absolutely put your foot down. Bending over backward is not a thing that I’m willing to do anymore to sacrifice sleep or time with my son. I have to take care of myself.
What’s something that previously felt out of reach but now feels like it’s yours for the taking?
I think just finding joy and inner peace … I wish it wasn’t such a struggle for me. Not that I think so highly of myself, but I wish I didn’t have such a throbbing heartbeat for world suffering. I sometimes wish I could just put my head in the sand and enjoy my privilege, but I don’t want to do that. That’s not the life for me. But I think I’m letting go of having everyone around me put their feet to the fire. I can only focus on myself and align myself with people that have the same wants and morals. I want this year to be about my own happiness — becoming a better mom and boss and human and writer and all the things.
This story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Natascha Augustin, who was named managing director of Warner Chappell Music Germany in January, started at the company as a half-time intern, rotating among various departments. She didn’t yet know what she wanted to do, and when an executive asked her, “I said I wanted to be a bookkeeper,” she remembers with a laugh. “Because there were two old ladies there who every afternoon ate cake.”
“He said, ‘You are not a bookkeeper’ – he knew better.” So, she became an A&R assistant at Warner Chappell in Munich.
The way Augustin talks about music publishing in Germany – the only big country in which Warner Chappell is No. 1 by market share, with 27.8%, according to Official German Charts data – it’s actually hard to imagine her doing anything else. And aside from internships in New York at Matador Records and Beggars Group, and a short stint at Warner Chappell in LA., she really hasn’t.
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Augustin owes much of her success to the rise of German hip-hop – Deutschrap – now the country’s biggest genre by market share. Years ago, Augustin got a call from Farid Bang, a German rapper of Moroccan-Spanish descent, who asked her about a publishing deal. At the time, “German rap was the enfant terrible of the music industry,” remembers Augustin, sitting in the airy listening room of Warner Music Central Europe’s new Berlin headquarters, but “I met with him and his story was interesting – he had done it all himself.”
At a time when the genre was still dominated by imported American stars, indie labels and underground artists, Augustin went all in. “People would call him” – Bang – “and he’d send them to me,” Augustin says. “I just met them on an equal level.”
In 2010, Augustin was named head of A&R. (She was subsequently promoted to Senior Creative Director and then vice president.) Within a decade, Warner Chappell had the No. 1 market share in Germany. This implies an even more impressive record of success with German songwriters given that the company is No. 3 globally and gets less market share in Germany from global music than its competitors.
In some cases, Augustin says, she became “the main point of contact in the industry” for rappers that had independent label or distribution deals. But she also signed a number of major label stars, including Capital Bra, Luciano and Apache 207 – who, with iconic singer Udo Lindenberg had the No. 1 single of 2023, “Komet.” (The song was written in part by Apache 207 and the producer Sira, another Augustin signing.) In 2023, she signed the superstar Shirin David, who might be thought of as a Made-in-Germany Nicki Minaj. “Shirin was very influential,” says Augustin, who still lives in Munich but also spends considerable time in Warner Music Central Europe’s offices in Hamburg and Berlin. “She brought the American rap idea here for women.”
In 2021, Augustin also played a key role in launching Atlantic Records in Berlin as a label focused on German hip-hop – an unusual joint role in recorded music for a publishing executive. She leveraged her connections in hip-hop to sign Yung Hurn, DJ Stickle, and Lil Zey, among others, but with the hiring of an executive to lead Atlantic and Augustin’s promotion, she’s now free to focus exclusively on publishing. One priority for the year ahead is Ayliva, a young rap star who writes her own songs and was the second-most-streamed artist last year after Taylor Swift.
When “Munch,” an unbothered slice of New York drill by rapper Ice Spice, exploded on social media and into the pop culture lexicon in late summer 2022, few listeners had heard of the talent behind it. But over the next year, the Bronx MC with the trademark ginger Annie ’fro (which she sometimes also wears in a buss down) leveled up — and raised her profile — with each single she released, all powered by her quippy, unfussy lyrics and the Jersey club-inflected beats of her longtime collaborator, RIOTUSA.
Her early singles, even if they missed the Billboard Hot 100, still resonated culturally, laying the groundwork for commercial wins. In February 2023, Ice earned her first solo Hot 100 entry with “In Ha Mood,” which has collected over 166 million official U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate. By the close of 2023, she had scored four Hot 100 top 10s, an achievement that tied Nicki Minaj (2012) and Cardi B (2018) for the most by a female rapper in a calendar year.
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Ice has earned over 1.7 billion official U.S. on-demand streams. Her Like…? EP, which yielded the Hot 100 No. 4 hit “Princess Diana” with Minaj, peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200. In 2023, Ice also collected two top 10s on the Radio Songs chart — “Barbie World” (with Minaj and AQUA, No. 5) and “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2” (with PinkPantheress, No. 8) — as well as her highest-peaking Hot 100 entry yet, for her appearance on Taylor Swift’s “Karma” remix (No. 2). With that momentum, she scored four Grammy nominations (including best new artist), an opening slot on Doja Cat’s Scarlet tour and prominent billing at Coachella this spring.
Now Ice — who was recently all over social media after accompanying Swift to the Super Bowl — is focused on prepping her forthcoming debut studio album, Y2K. “I think this is some of my best work,” she says, hinting that “it’s not going to be too long — it’s going to be sweet and to the point.” In the meantime, Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Hitmaker honoree can’t stop putting out smashes: Her latest single, the new jazz-tinged “Think U the Sh-t (Fart),” has already garnered 11.8 million official U.S. on-demand streams in less than a month.
What defines a hit for you?
There’s so many different types of hits. But my favorite is the one that’s just, like, culturally important. Fans know the lyrics and care about it. They just love the song. Growing up, so many songs that I thought were hits and statistically weren’t really, like numberswise, if you care about that. But in my heart, it’s a hit and I know all the lyrics.
You scored four Billboard Hot 100 top 10s in 2023. Which is your favorite?
“Princess Diana” with Nicki [Minaj] because I felt like “Princess Diana” was already my best song on [Like…?], but then it didn’t chart or anything until Nicki got on it. I was just so happy to have both of those worlds where I felt like it was culturally a great song, but also it charted. And then I had my dream collab fulfilled at the same time.
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Did Nicki or Taylor give you any songwriting advice?
When I was in the studio with Taylor, like, I’ll never forget that. She told me, “No matter what, just keep making music and everything’s going to be fine.”
As you craft your debut album, what are you listening for?
First, a really hard beat. If the beat doesn’t instantly move me — like if I don’t physically feel the beat of the speakers — then I’m just going to keep moving on to the next one. But as soon as I know, I know I have that beat. It’s up from there.
Some past winners of this award include Charli XCX and Dolly Parton. Who are some of your favorite hit-makers of all time?
Well, first, shout out to them; they’re iconic, each in their own way. I would say Lana Del Rey — I’m obsessed with her, and I feel like all of her songs are hits, even the ones that aren’t as big as the others. Rihanna, too. I have both [her and Del Rey’s] vinyls. Taylor Swift. Of course, Nicki Minaj. Drake. The list is long!
Is there a hit of yours that you were surprised people latched on to — or one you thought would be bigger?
I thought that “Actin a Smoochie” would be a bigger song. Every time I hear it, I’m just gagged that it’s not bigger. [But] “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2,” I never thought that song would be as big as it is. I knew it would be a big moment, but I didn’t think it would be triple-platinum.
For what it’s worth, when I was in college, the streets was definitely running up “Smoochie.”
Oh, see! Thank you! That’s what I care about.
This story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.