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Drake is back, and he\u2019s got a lot to say.<\/p>\n
After weeks of promotional stunts around the city of Toronto, the Canadian hip-hop megastar surprised fans by dropping not one, but three new albums: Iceman, Maid of Honour and Habibti.<\/p>\n
Today on Commotion, culture critics Matt Amha, Pablo The Don and We Love Hip Hop podcast host Friday join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to review the new releases, and unpack Drake’s place in music right now.<\/p>\n
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.<\/a><\/p>\n WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:<\/p>\n Elamin: I can imagine somebody listening to this conversation going, \u201cOK, we’ve got three albums. Where do I start? How do I handle this?\u201d I’m going to go around the table and ask each of you to say where you think the starting point should be. I think there’s a good case for that to be Iceman\u2026. My argument to this table is going to be that, actually, I think Maid of Honour is the album where Drake is doing the most interesting things.<\/p>\n It’s not his best rapping. That’s clearly Iceman. But Maid of Honour is where he’s actually trying some new, inventive things that feels like, to me, the thesis of where Drake could go next. There’s also the features on it. You\u2019ve got Popcaan, you\u2019ve got Central Cee, you’ve got Stunna Sandy\u2026. There is a world Drake is kind of assembling, and telling you that he’s actually pretty conversant in all these worlds, which feels very Toronto to me in a lot of different ways\u2026. I think Maid of Honour is going to have the longest legs. Matt, what about you?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Matt: I would say, objectively, Iceman feels like the thing that is the centerpiece, and he’s created a world\u2014 like, these are constellations around the sun, if you will, right? \u201cIceman\u201d is the thing he’s been branding himself as. \u201cIceman\u201d seems to be the thing that he’s now calling himself in a real, serious way, too, which is also kind of funny\u2026. So, I would say Iceman. But I think he’s doing interesting stuff, as you’ve said, on the other records that may not necessarily be present in Iceman. But Iceman is of the moment. This is where he’s addressing the last two years or so of his life. He’s directly talking about it, so I think that that’s where most people should probably start.<\/p>\n Elamin: Pablo, what about you?\u00a0<\/p>\n Pablo: I think Iceman as well. I think, again, of the moment, where he’s addressing the bulk \u2014 it’s what people who maybe aren’t deep, intricate fans or music critics of Drake should start because that’s probably the things you know the most about Drake. When you’re talking about Maid of Honour, I do agree that he’s doing some interesting stuff. But to me, it feels like he’s doing things that we’ve seen him do before, just in a different way\u2026. He’s pulling in all his different influences from different eras in his life, and I think that’s the cool part about Maid of Honour, Habibti, is if you like the R&B, if you like the Take Care Drake, there you go. That’s your album. I do think Iceman is the best way to get in if you haven’t really been into Drake as much as maybe we have.<\/p>\n Elamin: Friday, what do you think?<\/p>\n Friday: I agree, I think Iceman is the first one that you should listen to \u2014 get all of that stuff out of the way. However \u2026 Maid of Honour is going to be something that lasts the test of time, because he’s not talking about any of that stuff. You know, we’re just going to the party.<\/p>\n Elamin: That is my reaction to Maid of Honour, this idea of it’s a wonderful sort of party record, but also at the same time it’s the party record that will continue to exist. Honestly, Nevermind was a very polarizing record when it came out, like do we want electronic music from Drake? And this is him saying, \u201cI can do it better, and I can continue to actually push.\u201d Like, this interest is organic to Drake, and I actually kind of buy it.<\/p>\n Pablo: \u201cBeyonc\u00e9 isn’t on my heels and about to release Renaissance, so I\u2019ve got time to actually get my stuff off this time, you guys.\u201d<\/p>\n You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen<\/a> or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Panel produced by Ty Callender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-681221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681221","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=681221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}