First off: Condolences to the people of Toronto. Drake’s Iceman rollout plopped full blocks of ice in the middle of downtown, turned the CN Tower into his personal projection room, and wrought two explosives displays, one of which “unnerved residents who had lived through a propane plant explosion in 2008.” Yes, the long road to Drizzy’s first solo effort since 2023’s For All the Dogs has been paved with built-for-Twitch stunts and promotional hijinks ripped right from Looney Toons. But his greatest fakeout happened during a May 14 stream previewing all of Iceman, before revealing the release had company: two additional albums, Habibti and Maid of Honour.
All told, Drake delivered 43 new tracks (or nearly two-and-a-half hours of music) to sift through; among them are some of his best songs since Scorpion. So stretch out, get pajammy-ed up, and let’s get into it.
Surprise! It’s Triplets
Although Drake’s clear goal with this triple drop is unloading the clip, there’s a semblance to the sprawl. Iceman is the blockbuster rap album, packed with his heaviest beats in years. Habibti is a watery rendition of Heartbreak Drake, fitted out with classic R&B (“I’m Spent,” the on-the-nose “Classic”) and SWAG-style acoustics (“Rusty Intro”). Don’t throw on the cozy oversized sweater yet, though: Maid of Honour is the club record, landing like a more “Controlla”-fied sequel to Honestly, Nevermind, thanks in part to the lights-out “Fergalicious” flip in opener “Hoe Phase” (which is basically what Jack Harlow’s “First Class” could’ve been if it hadn’t, well, sucked). While Iceman is the centerpiece here, Maid of Honour stands to get more mileage this summer. Deploying a top-notch, slutty house-meets-electro record is one of the canniest moves he’s ever made. It’s also the one arena where Kendrick can’t compete.
Smoke For Everyone
Top of mind ahead of this album was how Drizzy would respond to the Kendrick Lamar feud that brought his career to such a low he sued his own label, lost, and decamped to Australia with faux sizzling bullet holes in his techwear. There’s plenty of smoke for K.Dot here, although it’s notably less virulent than the fire-and-brimstone of Drake’s last diss track, “The Heart Part 6.” On “Make Them Remember,” he compares Kendrick to petite basketball player Muggsy Bogues, deems GNX “mid, mid, mid, skip, skip,” and addresses the recent disappearance of “Not Like Us” and other Kendrick tracks from DSPs: “Who is this guy for real/I guess a magician/100 million streams vanished, no one got questions.”
If any pre-release single really set the table for the score-settling, though, it’s “What Did I Miss?,” which has more ire for the friends Drake lost favor with amid Kendrickgate. Not-so-strays land on A$AP Rocky and Rihanna (“Your baby mama ain’t even post a single, damn where she at, damn where she at?”), Jay-Z (“I’ll take $500K, not the dinner, I never could learn shit from none of y’all”), LeBron James (“Please stop askin’ about what’s goin’ on with 23 and me/I’m a real n—a and he’s not, it’s in my DNA”), and “Not Like Us” producer Mustard (“Mustard heard about us, gotta catch up to the slaps/You ain’t had one since me and YG rapped”). Later, on “Make Them Pay,” Drake has bones to pick with Rick Ross (“I was aidin’ Ross with streams before Adin Ross had ever streamed”) and J. Cole (“Fuck a big three anyway, there was too many chefs in the kitchen”). But his sharpest admonishment is for DJ Khaled, who Drake calls out for staying silent on the genocide in Gaza: “The beef was fully live, you went halal and got on your deen/And your people are still waitin’ for a free Palestine/But apparently everything isn’t black and white and red and green.” It’s not just posturing, either: Drake signed a ceasefire petition back in October 2023.
Make New Friends, But Keep the PND
Thanks to the esteemed journalism of Twitter-first outlets like “HFR Podcast,” every major rap rollout is rife with extremely fake, extremely hilarious tracklists. (Frank Ocean and Drake’s first ever official collaboration will appear in a song called “To Be Frank”? Sure, Jan.) Disinformation industrial complex aside, there are plenty of familiar faces all in their right places: 21 Savage mumbling near a car, Sexyy Red interpolating the “Cha Cha Slide” on Miami bass heater “Cheetah Print,” PartyNextDoor PartyNextDoor-ing, and Popcaan freeing up Drake to behave his most Fake Jamaican.
While a couple additional surprises make the final cut—Molly Santana, Loe Shimmy, Iconic Savvy, Stunna Sandy—the biggest is Future, who Drake hasn’t worked with since 2022 and, even more notably, since Pluto and Kendrick released “Like That,” the 2023 domino of a Drake diss that eventually begot Serena Williams crip walking at the Super Bowl. A wide swath of producers, from Drizzy lodestars like 40 and Tay Keith to newer affiliates like Riot, come up across the credits too, as well as… wait, is that not one but two beats from Florida remix lord DJ Frisco954? Despite all that solo time in his mansion betting on Stake and FaceTiming Adin Ross, Aubrey still has taste.
UMG Woes
Amid all the individual disses, Drake’s three-album warpath has its sights set on one major conglomerate: his label, UMG, with which he re-signed a massive $400 million deal in 2022, then sued in 2025 over the fallout from “Not Like Us.” When he announced that Iceman wouldn’t land alone, fans began speculating that the maneuver was a means to fulfill his contract in one fell swoop, à la Frank Ocean releasing Endless as his final Def Jam album, then dropping the generational text Blonde independently one day later. Iceman, Maid of Honour, and Habibti are all registered “under exclusive license to Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings,” and the number of albums he’s locked in to release on the label hasn’t been publicized. Whatever the legal specifics are, Drake doesn’t mince words about wanting out, lamenting, “Swear my label gotta free me baby” on “Janice STFU” and insisting “I’m better off independent, they should let him leave, yeah/’Cause I just wanna be free” on “Make Them Pay.”
If The Sequin Glove Fits
The Iceman cover leaves little to interpretation: It’s a photo of a hand, presumably Drake’s, wearing a sequined glove straight out of Michael Jackson’s wardrobe. That’s not false advertising, either. Across all three albums, Drake positions himself shoulder to shoulder with MJ, in sound, identity, and chart motion. The latter lane has some validity to it: Recently, Drake surpassed Jackson as the artist with the most albums that have spent 10 years on the Billboard 200. However, an uncomfortable fourth comparison hangs over the New King of Pop flexes. After Lamar’s shot-heard-round-the-world “Certified lover boy? Certified pedophile” bar, Drake laying on the Michael worship so thick feels ill-advised, if not overtly bleak.
Bonus: Some Bars for the Road:
“I don’t do psychedelics because I’m too scared of unpacking/Sometimes I only see myself in my therapist glasses/But I’m not taking it serious ’cause she’s very attractive” (“Make Them Cry”)
“My social battery is drained… for real for real” (“Make Them Remember”)
“Samuel Bankman, free all my guys up” (“Dust”)
“I didn’t say that you’re the most selfish girl alive/I just meant that you should hope that she doesn’t die” (“Road Trips”)
“Please just don’t settle for him, whatever you choose/The venue that your wedding is at has some shady reviews” (“Goose & The Juice”)
“White kids listen to you ’cause they feel some guilt and that’s how your soul gets fulfilled/Handin’ out turkeys on camera inside of your hood, then you go back to the hills” (“Janice STFU”)
“Why do you save all these shots of your screen? Are you a goalie?” (“Q&A”)
“Smack that ass, smack that big old ass, I smack that ass (Smack it)” (“Cheetah Print”)
