Ice Spice put a crowd filled with Taylor Swift haters in their place during her performance on Sunday at the Rolling Loud Europe Festival in Vienna.
The 24-year-old rapper was entertaining the Austrian capital with her hits when she broke into the remixed version of Taylor Swift’s song Karma, which she is featured on.
Many people caught on video in the crowd didn’t seem to care for Swift’s tune, and they could be seen booing and pointing their thumbs down.
But Ice Spice — who was part of Taylor’s squad when she cheered on her boyfriend Travis Kelce at this year’s Super Bowl — kept her cool and instead mocked the in-person trolls with a seemingly sweet gesture.
The hitmaker — real name: Isis Naija Gaston — put her impeccably manicured hand to her mouth and blew kisses at the disruptive audience members as Taylor’s song played over the speaker system.
Ice Spice blows kisses to audience members booing Taylor Swift during ‘Karma’ at Rolling Loud Europe. https://t.co/nzE5zf8TV2
— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 7, 2024
Aside from the clash with Taylor Swift detractors, the rest of Ice Spice’s festival set appeared to go off without a hitch.
For her performance, Ice Spice wore pin-straight tangerine hair that reached down to her hips.
She was decked out in a sheer green lace bodysuit with flesh-baring ties running up the sides of her legs and over her midriff.
The rapper completed the colorful look with a set of short, chunky black boots.
Karma first entered the world as a solo song performed by the 34-year-old Eras Tour star on her 2022 album Midnights, though it wasn’t released as a single until May of last year.
The song was another massive hit for Swift, and the remix featuring Ice Spice was similarly popular, with the new version peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Ice Spice’s presence was initially met with controversy from fans of both artists, as some believed that Taylor was merely trying to blunt the public criticism she had received for dating The 1979 frontman Matty Healy after he participated in a set of jokes about her with comedians Adam Friedland and Nick Mullen on their podcast The Adam Friedland Show, which some listeners said were racist.
Taylor and Matty set rumors of a relationship flying in early 2023, but it wasn’t until May of last year that they made it official that they were dating.
However, amid the controversy over Healy’s podcast appearance, the two quietly split in June of 2023, around a month after her collaboration with Ice Spice was released.
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Fans worried Taylor only worked with Ice Spice to blunt criticism for dating The 1979’s Matty Healy, who was featured on a podcast reacting to allegedly racist jokes about the rapper. But Taylor told Spotify that it was Ice Spice’s team who reached out first because the rapper was a fan; seen Sunday in Vienna
However, the billionaire musician later downplayed claims that she was doing damage control, as she claimed in an interview with Spotify, via Cosmopolitan, that it was Ice Spice who first reached out.
‘Collaborating with Ice Spice on Karma was one of the most natural things. She reached out through her team, just kind of saying, “Hey, you know, Ice has been a big fan of Taylor’s since she was a little kid, we’d love to collaborate if that was ever something that came about,”‘ Taylor explained while revealing the genesis of her hit collaboration.
‘I had been listening to [Ice Spice] nonstop — like, getting ready for my tour, I was just listening to Ice Spice constantly,’ Taylor continued. ‘So I immediately got her number and said, “Hey, would you want to do your version of Karma, do you relate to this?” And so she jumped in headfirst.’
Since then, Ice Spice and Taylor have become good friends, and the rapper is a regular fixture in the singer–songwriter’s squad of high-profile female friends.
