Name: Lady Ice

Where She From: Manchester

When She Started: “I first got into a studio when I was about 12. From there, I was making music on and off—thinking my work rate was sick—but I was making, like, three tracks a year [laughs]. I only really count it from when I started doing it professionally, without having to work a 9-to-5, which was in 2019.”

Genre: UK Rap / Grime

File Next To: Lady Leshurr, Mimi Mxnroe, Tia Carys

Sounds Like: “I would say my sound is a Northern/Jamaican blend—kinda like a jerk sandwich, with the chicken inside the barm instead of chips! If you’re Northern, you’ll get it. I switch between my Northern accent and my Jamaican mother tongue. Patois is the first thing I remember speaking as a child because my mum had such a strong accent. I’d say things like, ‘Out we’re going,’ instead of, ‘We’re going out.’ Even the first lyrics I wrote were a mixture of Patois and Northern phrases.”

First Music That Inspired Her: “Skepta’s ‘Duppy (Doin’ It Again)’ is when I really put pencil to paper. I say pencil, not pen, because I remember the brown pencil vividly. I remixed Bearman and Jammer’s lyrics from the same song and wrote it down on one of my mum’s envelopes from a letter she’d received. I feel like I was about 8 or 9 years old at the time. I was obsessed with flows and rhyming words together, which is probably why I loved English so much as a subject in school.”

If there’s one thing every grime MC absolutely has to have to get anywhere, it’s a USP. Grime has always been built on individuality—on setting yourself apart at all costs. For Manchester’s Lady Ice, that means turning her blended Northern and Jamaican heritage up to 11. As she puts it, she’s “kinda like a jerk sandwich, with the chicken inside the barm instead of chips.” Much of that Jamaican influence comes directly from her mum, who spoke Patois in the house and raised her on a diet of Caribbean music alongside disco, funk and soul from the likes of David Ruffin, The Chi-Lites and Shalamar. Eventually, her mum got Sky installed, and MTV Base introduced her to rap and R&B from both sides of the Atlantic. Then, one day, her brother came home with a Wiley CD—and from that point on, they were a strictly Channel U household.

Lady Ice started making music after getting her first peek inside a studio at 12. “I was in the studio with 10 other boys that I formed a crew with from my area and school,” she tells TRENCH. “We just spat bars over a grime beat that one of the boys made—eight bars each. I can’t even remember what it sounded like; it’ll be in the archives somewhere.” But, by her own admission, she didn’t fully commit at first. That changed in 2019, when she decided to treat music like a full-time job. First, though, she had to get her name out there. That same year, The Rap Game UK hit BBC Three for its first season, and Lady Ice made sure she was there. She turned out to be the show’s biggest success, winning the competition and leveraging every bit of that momentum to take the next step. She already had a couple of singles out by the time the show aired, but by the end of 2020, she’d doubled her catalogue. She hasn’t taken her foot off the pedal since, and it’s paying off, with grime’s top tier showing a lot of love. Just this year, she collaborated with Scorcher on the R&G summer banger “Falling Over Love”, while turning in freestyles for Sir Spyro, Fire In The Booth, BL@CKBOX and Link Up TV.

Lady Ice’s star status is undeniable now, with brand deals and collaborations pouring in. “Seeing my face all over billboards across the world, then bringing my mum into the middle of Manchester city centre to see her baby on the biggest billboards was the maddest feeling ever,” she says of her recent JD campaign. “When you’re from a place where the odds are against you, you’ve lost your dad to the streets at a young age, you’re caring for your mum, all while trying to pursue a professional music career, it hits different. When you work hard for a substantial amount of time, you can feel lost or stagnant, but God reminded me that day why I deserve to be here and made me see the fruits of my labour. When I have to leave my mum to travel and she gets sad, it was like, ‘HERE MUM! This is yours.’ When I go, it’s all for us.”