{"id":679518,"date":"2026-05-19T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/679518\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:32:10","slug":"iceman-is-drakes-best-album-in-10-years-if-you-dont-listen-too-closely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/679518\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Iceman\u2019 Is Drake\u2019s Best Album in 10 Years, If You Don\u2019t Listen Too Closely"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first sign that Drake actually pulled his comeback off? The music videos. Great, distinct, rich visuals, nearly 20 of them, from an artist who is typically extremely hit-or-miss in this area (give or take an \u201cHYFR\u201d and that time Karena Evans took over creative duties for an entire album rollout). But it\u2019s deeper than thinking back to \u201cEnergy\u201d or the limp short film that accompanied Views; just last summer Drake tried to jumpstart his Iceman rollout<\/a> with a series of ambitious but increasingly conceptually-laborious livestream \u201cepisodes,\u201d and the thematic vision (or lack thereof) for this album seemed concerning.<\/p>\n

I was expecting more bullshit like Drake<\/a> personifying his 2024 beef loss as Pinocchio killers chasing him around Europe but instead, Iceman Episode 4 is more of a visual album of loosely connected videos. Despite being in Europe myself for the stream\u2019s 9:45 ET drop, I\u2019m glad I woke up for it; the unified visuals made the new music hit even harder, their cohesion and range\u2014from thermal imagery, to explosion-porn, to an animated interlude\u2014was almost as infectious as the fun Drake himself is clearly having in them. (Hats off to Drake\u2019s longtime collaborator Theo Skudra, who helmed all of these and whose powers have been growing steadily since he made the leap from Drake\u2019s photographer\/videographer to his go-to director.)<\/p>\n

Take \u201cBurning Bridges,\u201d which kicks off with a one-take tracking shot through a restaurant that floats upstairs to a private room where Drake and the OVO boys are turning up to the track, their diegetic chants of the refrain (\u201cwhere she at?!\u201d) and goofy peekaboo dance to go with it only adding to an already great vibe. (The chants definitely should\u2019ve made the final CDQ.)<\/p>\n

But key in on what Drake\u2019s actually saying in that catchy hook, and the smiling and nodding might give way to a furrowed brow. It\u2019s hard not to do a double-take at lines like \u201cI put you n-ggas through the wringer\/You gettin bodied by a singin\u2019 n-gga.\u201d It sure sounds great, with Drake employing a hypnotic, Kodak Black-on-\u201cSkrt\u201d<\/a> flow, and the reflexive lore callback to an old Drake classic (one of several on Iceman) is good nostalgia bait, but Drake\u2014weren\u2019t you the one who was put through the wringer? Who exactly did he body if he\u2019s the only one in a position of having to come back? Throw him some bail and say this specific song is for A$AP Rocky<\/a> (one of many people not named Kendrick that Drake did mostly get the better of on his diss track \u201cFamily Matters\u201d), and the central thesis seems to be that Rocky and Rihanna (or whoever) must not be on solid ground because she\u2026 didn\u2019t post his new music on her Instagram page. This is the dumbest, most sophomoric line of thought, since, well, \u201cWhy is she following Dave Free and not Mr. Morale?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ninety percent of Iceman is Drake re-litigating The Beef<\/a>. A couple of songs addressing fallouts, betrayals, reflection, etc. is fair, but a whole album? I can\u2019t put it better than one tweet I saw<\/a>: \u201cyou not supposed to let n-ggas know they bothered you this much.\u201d It\u2019s to the point that when Big Ice tries to flex as if he\u2019s too cold to be affected elsewhere in the music, he doth protest too much. Admitting summer 2024 was a dark time? That\u2019s good stuff. But Drake can\u2019t commit to accepting his positioning, and as such the content is filled with contradictions. At the beginning of the album he boasts that he can\u2019t remember one rap from Kendrick, certainly not from his diss onslaught\u2014the rest of the project proceeds to reference lines and jabs from virtually each Kendrick diss. He even names the blockbuster olive-branch reunion with Future after one of the most viral lines in \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virtually every track is comprised of either snarling, why-I-oughta raps about all the things he could\u2019ve and should\u2019ve done at the beef’s peak, or worse, stop-the-count raps where he flat-out refuses to acknowledge that he \u201clost.\u201d It\u2019s overkill. Did DeMar DeRozan\u2019s Pop Out and Not Like Us cameos really warrant an entire song<\/a>? Take a shot for every seething bar aimed at nameless \u201cpussies\u201d across the album, and you\u2019re meeting Biggie before the outro. The p-word is Ice\u2019s favorite epithet but sadly, he can never get it off convincingly; his chest is puffed up, but he\u2019s blowing out hot air. \u201cWhisper My Name\u201d goes crazy until you remember his name was uttered quite clearly on national television. Later on the album Drake references the Super Bowl, wishing he could wipe Kendrick\u2019s \u201csmug look off of his face.\u201d There are no lines on here worthy of making Kendrick pause his park push-ups to record a response, only confirmation that Kenny got under Iceman\u2019s skin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first sign that Drake actually pulled his comeback off? The music videos. Great, distinct, rich visuals, nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[569,5320,75,43,12891,341,44,1778,41,39,42,40,343],"class_list":["post-679518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-culture","tag-drake","tag-entertainment","tag-headlines","tag-hip-hop","tag-music","tag-news","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}