Disclaimer: I, Kathryn, have no clue who Millard Fillmore is. Additionally, everything I’ve said here is made up so that it fits the timeline that I want it to.
Have you ever heard of One Direction? If you’re one of those people who like to pretend they listen to niche artists so that they seem cool and mysterious, maybe you might’ve heard of them. In the early 2000s, I was watching this show called The X Factor, a British show created by my British friend Simon Cowell who thought it might be the Next Great thing. Unfortunately, the show wasn’t doing too well so I felt a real great sense of pity for Sir Cowell and thus I ended up on my couch with The X Factor playing in the background trying to support my poor old pal. It was purely by chance that my dear friend stumbled upon this group of white boys who thought they might be able to sing, still debatable IMHO.
Fast forward a couple days later, I was making some snack I’d found the recipe for on Craigslist when I had the brilliant idea of forming a female version of Single Orientation. During those days, everyone thought they could make the Next Great boy band, but unfortunately only Korea had been successful thus far. I mean, who else could compare to the absolute stardom of BTS? They were like a singing, dancing, joke-making, charisma-maxxing combo plate lunch you can only buy at Zippy’s. But I knew, I had exactly what it took to make the first great girl band.
First, I began by thinking about what I liked the most. Surfing, pity watching The X Factor, andddd Zippy’s…AHA, I could make some kind of food-related band……..like maybe….THE SPICE GIRLS! Wow, that stroke of genius really just illustrates my knack for identifying the Next Great thing. Just like the five old saps in I Dimension, there would be five girls in my band. I called up my other pal Fillard Millmore, and we began to talk about how we should recruit these girls. Ruminating on whether we should blast auditions on Craigslist or just send an email to random people’s AOLs, I had the great idea to have applicants take a personality quiz I made on the fly. They could be sporty, posh, scary, baby, or ginger. Don’t ask me why there’s only one food related spice there, I was craving that wad of ginger you get with sushi.
Yada, yada, we held auditions and these five girls were chosen. Now, sitting in that room with my right-hand man (Fillard Millmore) and the gals, I could just feel how big we were gonna be. The charts, the billboards, the rankings—they would be ours for the taking and Uno Dimension could do nothing to stop us.
Now, I’m gonna do a little timeskip since I don’t think you’d be interested in the process of the songwriting and recording. We ended up being a mid-tier band, a couple of our songs like “Wannabe” and “Say You’ll Be There” did pretty well but nothing to brag about. Unfortunately, after half a decade, the band was just growing apart and I could just feel it in my bones that the Next Great thing was around the corner.
So I waited. I waited for 20 years (yes, two-zero) for my new project to come around. Sitting on my couch one day, I was scrolling TikTok when I began noticing talk of this up and coming rapper. Her rhyming words and smooth flow caught my attention and a feeling bloomed inside of me—the same feeling I got when I had the idea for the Spice Girls. Feeling nostalgic, I quickly DM’d the underground artist in the hopes she might also be successful under my wise and all-knowing musical tutelage. With a second stroke of luck, she quickly messaged me back letting me know she was interested in signing onto my one-man production/management/promo company (as you know, I love combos!).
Sitting in my office with Fillard, we were chatting as a few short knocks interrupted our conversation on whether the Saimin or Loco Moco was a better deal at Zippy’s. Calling for them to come in, the door opened, revealing a short woman with orange hair. “Hi, my name is Isis Gaston, but I go by Ice Spice.”
These few short words felt like a higher being had blessed me, acknowledging my talent for producing the Next Great thing. Thank you! How could such a coincidence come about? First I produce the Spice Girls, then I produce a rapper named Ice Spice? Life was perfect!
Those next few months, Fillard, Ice Spice, and I got to work writing only the most hard-hitting lyrics and emotion-provoking verses. Banger after banger came out, from “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2” to “Did It First” (with the Central Cee, yes we got the Central Cee to come!), it just felt like Ice’s potential was limitless.
After all this boundless success, we agreed she should go on a little hiatus to make the fans wait for new music. During her break, I really ruminated on all my successes. Even though the Spice Girls weren’t as great as I thought they might be, the things I learned from managing them ultimately led to my discovery of Ice Spice. She really made my label the crown jewel of the music industry.