5 biggest snubs from 2023 XXL Freshman Class

Ice Spice*

Among the 80 artists that were mentioned to be in the group considered for selection in the 2023 XXL Freshman Class, the most obvious and notable omission is the breakout superstar pop and drill rapper and songwriter Ice Spice.

The 23-year-old New York City native rapper has exploded onto the scene in the last summer when her song "Munch (Feelin' U)" blew up on social media and on streaming platforms. "Munch (Feelin' U)" is already RIAA certified Gold less than nine months after it originally dropped on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

Since Ice Spice first started to blow-up late last year, she now has multiple mainstream hits with other big-time artists across multiple different genres such as Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, and PinkPantheress.

Ice Spice's insane rise in the music industry is unmatched by really any other artist in the genre in the last 12 months. She's already amassed a whopping 37 million Spotify monthly listeners as of June 21, 2023, good for 74th in the world.

It's incredibly hard to think that the 2023 XXL Freshman Class selection process wound up just excluding Ice Spice naturally. That's why there is an asterisk next to her name on this list of the biggest snubs.

A likely scenario is that Ice Spice turned down the opportunity to be on the cover for this year's Freshman Class.

Assuming Ice Spice turned down XXL, she wouldn't be the first big-time hip-hop artist to do so in the last 10 or 15 years. Other world-famous artists in the genre, such as Drake, Tyler, the Creator, Nicki Minaj, A$AP Rocky, Post Malone, and Young Thug are just a few of the A-List rappers that turned down the XXL Freshman cover in the past.