Drake — Iceman
Drake continues to retread the same paths — and make the same mistakes.
Before the release of his ninth studio album, Iceman, it felt as though the formula for the project to succeed was fairly simple — Drake just needed to be focused and driven, as he had been on a few highlight tracks in the last few years, keep the project short and concise, and, crucially, stay away from calling back to his disastrous 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar. However, in reality, Drake did none of these things. Iceman, which is 18 tracks (and well over an hour) long, is one of three studio albums Drake released on May 15th via OVO/Republic/UMG.
The main criticism that can be made of Iceman is that it suffers from all the same flaws that Drake’s music has had for the past decade. While many of the beats are excellent and produced very well, they aren’t enough to salvage the performances Drake puts in over them. He continues to largely sound quite uninterested in the music he’s making; and, when the deliveries do change, they’re either pitched and processed very weirdly, or so drowned in autotune that they become unpleasant to listen to. His flows are quite repetitive and uninspired as well — something which becomes all the more apparent due to the fact there’s only two tracks with features, leaving sixteen fully solo Drake songs on the record. And even the scarce features that are present are far from stellar — regular collaborator 21 Savage in particular sounds exceedingly drowsy on his contributions on “B’s On The Table”. Even the typically abundant catchy moments are mostly absent here, drowned in the album’s attempts to be more serious and confessional.
And, on the topic of being confessional, nothing is quite as representative of the continuing artistic decline of Drake on this record as the lyrical content. Iceman aims to put forward an image of a man who is hurt, but experienced and cold-blooded enough to move on and keep dominating. The reality of the matter is that Drake sounds incredibly bitter and immature throughout most of the album; he keeps bringing the now two-year-old beef with Kendrick Lamar up over and over again, relentlessly continuing with his way-too-late, last-ditch efforts to try and spin the narrative in his favor.
Lines like “Fuck a big three anyway, there was too many chefs in the kitchen// It was a mess to begin with” make him sound incredibly childish and like he’s still in denial about what happened in 2024. There’s also a half-hearted jab at LeBron James following his co-sign of Kendrick Lamar during the beef, which Drake also seems to have kept on his mind since then.
And even looking past the endless recycling of the topic of past conflicts, the album is still dragged down by an interminable stream of eye-rolling similes (“This shit like the bag you bring on the plane, it’s gon’ carry on”, "flipping dough like Little Caesars”, “I reserve this shit like I'm indigenous”), incredibly surface-level wordplay ("I put the “man" in manipulation”, "Amex the only ones that credit me”, "I'm greater than everybody like some shredded cheese”), and cringeworthy lines that wouldn’t sound out of place on an edgy 13-year-old boy’s Snapchat stories (“Ironic ‘cause the Iceman was a nice man, now I’m hot and cold”, "I told y'all I'm settled in my evil ways”, “Got a real big heart, I'm a fucked up guy though”). There’s also a string of increasingly bizarre name drops, from Dora the Explorer to live streamer Adin Ross or controversial online gambling site Polymarket.
Overall, it’s hard to say that Iceman is a disappointing record, because, in many ways, it delivers exactly what was to be expected from a Drake project in 2026. There are some stellar instrumentals, but they are undercut by a performer who is too busy ruminating on the past to have anything new or interesting to say, and too complacent and checked out artistically to have any new or interesting ways to say it. When Drake says “How many artists I've had to witness do bad imitations?” on the opening track, “Make Them Cry”, the saddest part is that he doesn’t seem to realize that he himself has become one of those artists at this point in his career.
3.4/10
