\u201cIceman\u201d has cometh \u2014 and then some.<\/p>\n
After spending the better part of a year teasing his first solo album since 2023 \u2014 and his first, more importantly, since losing the epic rap battle<\/a> that climaxed with Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us\u201d \u2014 Drake finally dropped \u201cIceman\u201d late Thursday along with two other<\/i> albums whose existence took much of the world by surprise: \u201cMaid of Honour\u201d and \u201cHabibti.\u201d<\/p>\n Together, the three LPs comprise 43 new songs from the Toronto-born rapper and singer who\u2019s been searching for a path back to the pop-cultural perch he occupied for much of the 2010s. To assess his progress, The Times\u2019 Mikael Wood and August Brown took a preliminary listen then exchanged some thoughts.<\/p>\n MIKAEL WOOD: <\/b>Well, August, to paraphrase the most psychotic track from the Kendrick-and-Drake beef: Meet the many Grahams. Early signs suggested that \u201cIceman\u201d would constitute a return to Drake\u2019s tough-talking ways in the wake of his humiliating defeat, and indeed that\u2019s largely what the album delivers over plush yet hard-hitting beats.<\/p>\n Yet with \u201cMaid of Honour\u201d and \u201cHabibti,\u201d the 39-year-old born Aubrey Graham is also showcasing his other dominant modes: globe-tripping dance-music hedonist (on the former) and callow-sensitive R&B lover boy (on the latter). Clearly, the sheer volume and breadth of music here is meant to serve as a kind of shock-and-awe campaign designed to jolt us back to a time when Drake seemed to rule over not just hip-hop but all of pop music. (Don\u2019t forget that 2018\u2019s \u201cScorpion\u201d contained 25 tracks.)<\/p>\n What do you make of his super-sizing effort here? Does it speak of an overflow of creativity \u2014 or of an inability to edit? We should say that Drake\u2019s guests on the albums include 21 Savage, Central Cee, Sexyy Red, Popcaan and Future, the last of whom appears on \u201cIceman\u201d in a song called \u201cRan to Atlanta\u201d \u2014 a clear callback to Kendrick\u2019s line in \u201cNot Like Us\u201d where he accuses Drake of scurrying to the Southern rap capital any time he\u2019s in need of some street cred.<\/p>\n I can see that song finding its legs on rap radio along with \u2014 hey, whaddya know? \u2014 \u201c2 Hard 4 the Radio,\u201d which feels like a classic Drake jam \u00e0 la \u201cIn My Feelings\u201d or \u201cNice for What.\u201d I was also struck the first time through the albums by \u201cCheetah Print,\u201d a frisky strip-club joint, and \u201cGoose and the Juice,\u201d which sounds like \u2026 MGMT? I don\u2019t know, man.<\/p>\n Drake performs onstage during \u201cLil Baby & Friends Birthday Celebration Concert\u201d at State Farm Arena on Dec. 9, 2022, in Atlanta. <\/p>\n (Prince Williams \/ WireImage)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n AUGUST BROWN:<\/b> Drake\u2019s task at this juncture is interesting and unprecedented: How does a generational superstar come back from the most comprehensive \u201cEther<\/a>\u201d-ing in modern music history? To go from being the defining artist of the 2010s to fighting a scorched-earth war with your own label and hanging out with \u2014 ugh \u2014 Adin Ross on his livestream? <\/p>\n His low-stakes collaborative album with Partynextdoor last year suggested he might just lick his wounds and blow right past it. But this new music is neither a hard-bitten response to nor a rear-view departure from the worst years of his career. It\u2019s a guy still figuring out his next moves and deciding to make all of them at once.<\/p>\n As you said, Mikael, the trap-smeared \u201cRan to Atlanta\u201d shows he at least has a sense of humor about the whole debacle, reuniting with Future to do exactly what Kendrick accused him of. (Hey, the tactic works for a reason \u2014 because it sounds great.) \u201c2 Hard 4 the Radio\u201d is a truly funny song title for Drake and has a lively West Coast funk lean to boot. I agree that if there are any hits to be found amid this hook-light barrage of music, it\u2019s those two, and maybe the album\u2019s early single \u201cWhat Did I Miss\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s gigantic and churning and triumphal enough to make the case that Drake is still impervious. <\/p>\n Yet the beef is still background radiation to the whole project, and there\u2019s almost \u2014 almost<\/i> \u2014 something sympathetic when he raps on \u201cMake Them Pay\u201d that \u201cI need compliments \u2019cause lately it\u2019s just falling-outs and disagreements \/ Industry is really evil \/ And I faced the way they paint me, but it hurts just like the Philly Eagles.\u201d Drake is a rococo master of self-pity, but damned if he doesn\u2019t have a real reason for it this time. (That said, after \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d I maybe wouldn\u2019t use my comeback album cover to don a sparkly white glove and allude to music\u2019s most infamous alleged child molester?)<\/p>\n Onto the rest: \u201cMaid of Honour\u201d calls back to his failed-but-intriguing experiment in deep house, 2022\u2019s \u201cHonestly, Nevermind,\u201d but subs out that LP\u2019s raver fog for squelchy Miami bass, footwork and ghettotech. He probably thinks this one is in the raunchy lineage of Dance Mania records, but it\u2019s not nearly as committed to the bit. \u201cRoad Trips\u201d and \u201cCheetah Print\u201d have a fun Nina Sky bounce, and \u201cOutside Tweaking\u201d and \u201cTrue Bestie\u201d take cool hard-cut production turns. But if this is supposed to be his horny-devil dance-floor album, he\u2019s still limply phoning it in about his woes with OnlyFans models. How did he get such a muted performance out of Sexyy Red, of all people? If someone sidled up to me at the club and whispered \u201cSo much ass you should be cremated,\u201d as Drake does on \u201cBBW,\u201d I\u2019d reach for my bear spray.<\/p>\n He does better on \u201cHabibti,\u201d which feels like it collects all the weird castoffs of this cycle but ends up being the most interesting to follow. \u201cWNBA\u201d evokes that woozy, widescreen kingmaker period of \u201cTake Care\u201d and \u201cViews\u201d; \u201cWhite Bone\u201d is restless and unstructured and bubbling with texture while the moody guitars on \u201cFortworth\u201d feel like they\u2019re calling from inside Bieber\u2019s \u201cSwag\u201d-iverse. \u201cSlap the City\u201d clatters and coos with R&B falsetto and at least makes the blank nihilism of Drake\u2019s dating life feel self-aware. This is the least intentional of this trio of gormless, spray-and-pray LPs but perhaps the most layered and ambitious.<\/p>\n MIKAEL WOOD:<\/b> So what do we think this Temu haul of an album drop will do for Drake\u2019s career? As you pointed out, August, \u201cIceman\u2019s\u201d cover unmistakably evokes Michael Jackson \u2014 an icon of success (and, uh, other stuff) whom Drake has repeatedly used as a benchmark to measure his own impact. Billboard reports that Jackson is the only artist ever to occupy the top three slots on its album chart simultaneously. Given the excitement about Drake on the internet Thursday night, it doesn\u2019t seem impossible that he might equal that feat after a week of massive streaming activity (though gentle Noah Kahan, hilariously, might be the one who ends up thwarting him).<\/p>\n At moments over the last two years, Drake seems to have been projecting the idea that he\u2019s past caring about playing the pop-hit game; you can look at his cringey manosphere dalliance as his attempt to go around the old gatekeepers and connect directly with a narrow (if deeply passionate) slice of his fanbase. But the whole point of Drake has always been hits: his ability to read the culture and to funnel what he finds into songs that become almost oppressively ubiquitous.<\/p>\n With only a few exceptions \u2014 \u201c2 Hard 4 the Radio\u201d really does feel inevitable \u2014 I\u2019m not sure I hear that spirit in this stuff, either because Drake can\u2019t access it anymore or because he doesn\u2019t care to. Yet neither does he seem to be in his innovator\u2019s bag, trying out things to lead pop somewhere new as he\u2019s done so many times before.<\/p>\n Drake performs at State Farm Arena on Dec. 9, 2022, in Atlanta.<\/p>\n (Paul R. Giunta \/ Invision \/ AP)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n AUGUST BROWN:<\/b> I would absolutely crack up if Noah Kahan denied him the Jackson-equivalent chart feat he is so transparently trying for with this triptych. Social media buzzed with word that both Spotify and Apple Music had widespread outages last night upon release. But I wouldn\u2019t put it past him to be on some Chaotic Good-type skulduggery spreading the rumor that he is bigger than streaming\u2019s infrastructure. (Already, the most striking line from \u201cMake Them Cry\u201d \u2014 \u201cMy dad got cancer right now, we battlin\u2019 stages \/ Trust me when I say there\u2019s plenty things that I\u2019d rather be facin\u201d \u2014 may have been exaggerated.<\/a>)<\/p>\n This trio of LP\u2019s will be a huge hit, no question. At a time when rap seems to have lost its place on the Hot 100, this will surely notch a few top spots and reaffirm that Drake has a huge, committed fanbase that will stick with him in perpetuity. Not to compare a Jewish artist to a once-notorious Hitler-admirer, but there are echoes of the Ye model here, in that villain-arc Drake is now siloed off from pop and hip-hop music \u2014 both the culture and industry \u2014 when he used to define it. He\u2019s now more or less an A-list Twitch streamer with million-dollar beats.<\/p>\n With these LP\u2019s he\u2019s performing full-throttle fan service, but I can\u2019t see anyone outside of the Aubrey-sphere remembering much about these records in a year\u2019s time, whereas people will be singing \u201cLuther\u201d and taunting \u201cWop wop wop wop wop\u201d until the sun explodes.<\/p>\n If Drake truly sees himself as this generation\u2019s Michael Jackson, an artist and economy that\u2019s simply too big to fail (and too capable and adaptable to ever be truly uninteresting), congrats, he proved it. But the main feeling I have waking up from a long night with these three albums is exhaustion. Where the surprise-released \u201cGNX\u201d was airtight, instantly repayable and quotable, this is just a melting monolith<\/a> of Drake content.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIceman\u201d has cometh \u2014 and then some. After spending the better part of a year teasing his first solo album since 2023 \u2014 and his first, more importantly, since losing the epic rap battle that climaxed with Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us\u201d \u2014 Drake finally dropped \u201cIceman\u201d late Thursday along with two other albums whose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2418506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Drakes-new-albums-Breaking-down-Iceman-Maid-of-Honour-and.com2F472F382Fecb2a74d439c97466449bf6f.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2418507,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418505\/revisions\/2418507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Drake](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2237cd5\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6048x4024+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2Ffc%2F58c1047b43fc9686402cb3970ce6%2Flil-baby-in-concert-atlanta-00851.jpg)
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