Would Drake’s Flood of New Music Be Stronger as One Great 13-Song Album?

So as a thought experiment, I wanted to see if I could accomplish the hypothetical challenge I had tasked Drake with. To consider these 43 tracks and chisel out a traditional, succinct, skipless, 13-song classic sequenced with intentionality that best captures the music produced by these sessions. Because this body of work is so wide and diverse, some of your favorite songs won’t be here, and candidly, even some of mine didn’t make the cut. The assignment was to make a single-sit long player that flows, and you can’t make a Blueprint without cracking a few “Addicted to the Game”’s. After several spins, I think my resulting cut—which I’ll be referring to as The Iceman Sessions—is a dynamic effort that unites the three projects, lends it shape, and sustains an aesthetic across 48 minutes that I can personally confirm passes both the car and cookout test.

So habibis and habibtis, maids and grooms of honour, icemen and icewomen, gather around for my attempt to sculpt a more perfect Drake album. And if you think this sucks, or you could do better, my advice is make your own.

The Iceman Sessions

1. “Road Trips”

My first major edit was eschewing the traditional, cinematic, ponderous Drake intros that ease us into each of the three albums (Including Iceman’s “Make Them Cry”, which passed “Not Like Us” Friday to become the biggest single day streaming song ever) and launching straight into The Iceman Sessions with a soaring shot of espresso.

Another criticism lobbed at me from replies is that it would have been impossible for Drake to make a diamond-tight composite album out of the music we’ve been served, because—as has been the case with much of Drake’s work this decade—these three albums are, broadly, concept albums, with distinct tones and vibes (an idea very much lifted from Future, Drake’s crodie-turned-adversary-turned-friend-again-I-guess.)

I solved that problem by looking to Michael Jackson, who’s been on my mind lately thanks to his controversial, hagiographic, half-a-biopic blockbuster, and clearly also on Drake’s, if the new king of pop’s use of the old King of Pop’s $120,000+ bejeweled glove on the cover of Iceman is any indication. Specifically, I thought of Dangerous, Jackson’s now-underrated 1991 genre-melding masterpiece, which found a way to make hip hop, New Jack Swing, metal, R&B, and opera sit comfortably together on a single album that made its own pop-tabloid statements at a pivotal point in its maker’s life and career. I’m attempting the same trick by starting with “Road Trips,” imagining a single Drake album that blends his mid-tempo R&B-infused rap and mid-tempo rap-infused R&B together, drilling down on one mature sound.

2. “Whisper My Name”

Probably my favorite lyrical exhibition across the three albums, and some of the strongest pure rapping Drake has attempted over the last eightish years; he’s absolutely embedded in the pocket for long stretches here. A lot of armchair critics were complaining about the punchlines on this album, and what I have to say to you, my presumably-young friends, is that you wouldn’t have survived a day during Kanye’s lyrically goofy early-career heights, let alone Drake’s own hashtag-rap era. Much of the writing and rapping on Iceman is Jay-Z at the peak of his triple-entendre elegance by comparison. What I really appreciate about “Whisper My Name,” though, is that it isn’t dragged down by the narrative emphasis that sinks many of Iceman’s bloated, downtempo rap songs that easily could’ve been titled “(x)[AM/PM] in (y)”, passing off whiny, self-pitying complaints as resilience. It’s a song, not a sounding board.