Ice Spice shares the origin of "Stop playin’ with ’em, Riot" as she fails to complete Hot Ones

If you’ve listened to hip-hop, you’ve heard producer tags—it’s DJ Khaled heralding the arrival of “another one” or the declaration on a Metro Boomin beat, “If young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot.” In recent years another tag has entered the popular lexicon, courtesy of up-and-coming producer-rapper duo RiotUSA and Ice Spice: “Stop playin’ with ’em, Riot.” On a new episode of Hot Ones, Ice Spice explains the origins of the phrase and their partnership.

“We was friends first. I would be trying to freestyle and send little voice notes rapping and stuff to my friends. He was gassing me the most out of all my friends,” the “Princess Diana” artist recalled. “So I was like, maybe we could just work on something, you know what I’m saying? ’Cause I’ma go where I feel wanted, you know what I mean? ’Cause my other friends was being bougie and didn’t want to send me beats. But he was one of the only ones who wanted to. … He seen the vision, he definitely seen it. So that’s how that happened.”

As for that memorable producer tag, “I was actually in his studio, and I think I was making fun of his old tag or something like that. And then he was just like, ‘Oh, make me a tag,’” she said. It was her “first time in the booth,” she admitted, “and I was so nervous, I didn’t know what to say. And he was like, ‘Just say anything!’ And then I was just like, ‘Stop playin’ with ’em, Riot,’ and that’s how that happened.”

Ice Spice, who is only 24 years old, said it took about three years for her to become comfortable in the studio and find her voice and identity when recording. It took her much less time to figure out she was absolutely finished with Hot Ones. Despite her name and a professed love for spicy foods, Da Bomb Beyond Insanity was too “fucked up” for her to continue to the end of the Hot Ones lineup: “I’m not gonna do that to myself,” she said after taking a sniff of the next wing. She joins a short list of “Hall Of Shame” quitters that includes Ricky Gervais, Chance the Rapper, and—another one—DJ Khaled.