Life & Work with Ian I-Cee of OTP

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian I-Cee.

Hi Ian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve grown up with music being a huge part of my life and when I was 10 years old I watched the band Lamb of God on Conan O’Brien late night show and fell in love with vocals. I then spent the next 8 years learning to do metal vocals and then the following years I spent getting them right and growing my craft into singing and rapping.

In 2019 I decided to make my first ever song, a metal song that I have since deleted. Then in 2020 I decided to make another one, but a lot different. In the summer of 2021 I released GO STUPID with Sadzilla. By October 2021 the song had reached 1 million views on YouTube, which was all the motivation I ever needed to know I need to keep this going.

Some time after that I decided to release music weekly. I did this for over 2 years until I decided I needed more free time for my social life, my religion, and another music project. That was about a year ago and while I deeply enjoyed making music all the time, it’s much easier to balance and less stressful making music at my leisure now.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I would say that my second song going low-key viral was a sort of obstacle. It really messed with my expectations of what my music career was going to look like. I thought that within the first year of making music I would be able to quit my day job and go full time with music, which did not happen. I’ve since been able to reconcile with the fact that the goals I had were unrealistic and for the most part, out of my hands.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
With Ian I-Cee I mostly make hip-hop music of various sub-genres such as trap metal, dark trap, and nerdcore more recently. I think the song I’m most proud of is a dark trap depression lullaby called “Stranded”. It’s with my buddies Mvko and Doe Slurp and we’re in the process of making a whole album with songs just like the original underground hit.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up was interesting because I never really stayed in one place too long, I was born in California but I’ve lived in New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida as well. I would probably describe my younger self as a very anxiety riddled, tall, nerd who always found friends with the other outcasts. I wrote lots of poetry, but never really expected my writing to go anywhere. It more of an outlet I had to express myself at a time when I felt it would be impossible to be myself otherwise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/ianicee

Image Credits
All of these photos were taken by Lexi