{"id":579672,"date":"2026-05-12T10:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579672\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:51:09","slug":"drake-lost-the-beef-and-embraced-the-manosphere-is-it-too-late-for-him-to-win-back-his-audience-drake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579672\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake lost the beef and embraced the manosphere. Is it too late for him to win back his audience? | Drake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite his A-list pop star status, there\u2019s been a noticeable scrappiness to Drake<\/a>\u2019s rollout for his ninth album, Iceman. Last month, the rapper iced out his favorite court-side seats<\/a> at the Toronto Raptors\u2019 arena, with faux icicles dangling from the chairs. He followed that up with a more brazen stunt: a huge block of ice<\/a> in downtown Toronto for the public to chip at until it thawed, revealing the album date. In early May, he debuted a quirky episodic series<\/a> on YouTube featuring skits in an ice manufacturing plant and the rapper driving an Iceman-branded truck around Toronto. The mood seemed cheeky and defiant: good news for anyone who missed the memester of his 2016 viral hit Hotline Bling.<\/p>\n

It has been an eventful and complicated<\/a> time for Drake since his most recent solo studio album, 2023\u2019s For All the Dogs<\/a>. While he is still the highest streamed rapper artist in the world, he has been attacked by hip-hop. Two years ago, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar<\/a> and Drake engaged in a battle that no one came out of unscathed. There were accusations<\/a> of intimate partner violence towards Lamar, a song<\/a> about a possible daughter that Drake has hid, and Lamar\u2019s Grammy-winning death blow \u2013 Not Like Us<\/a> \u2013 about Drake being a hip-hop \u201ccolonizer\u201d who chases after young women. Consensus has said that he lost the beef between him and Lamar, and the consensus is right, but the backlash against Drake was already starting to formulate before Lamar issued the first warning shot in 2024 diss track Like That.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Fans that once loved Drake for his undeniable hooks and sensual R&B sensibilities jumped to Lamar\u2019s side as Drake\u2019s music began to feel more lonely and bitter, while Lamar showed himself to be surprisingly nimble during the beef. Drake had previously charmed audiences with his light-heartedness \u2013 as recently as 2021, he dressed up as a B-movie action star and Harlequin romance hero in his Way 2 Sexy<\/a> video \u2013 but this time he was the butt of a joke that he wasn\u2019t in on. A carnival of distrust and innuendo made the battle with Lamar both potent and excessive. Drake wasn\u2019t being evaluated in the context of the beef, or the music of the beef; and opinions flooded in based on the once-muted suspicions of him being a culture vulture.<\/p>\n

It was a 180 turn for an artist who had previously been widely embraced. \u201cHe essentially came out the gate appealing to women,\u201d said music critic and The Motherlode<\/a> author Clover Hope. \u201cHe leaned into the \u2018sing-songy mixtape Drake\u2019 that got him notoriety, [with] songs like Jungle<\/a> or others that had Aaliyah samples.\u201d Hope remembers that women were some of Drake\u2019s first supporters around the release of his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone. \u201cWhat we first appreciated about Drake was he made it clear that rap was for women,\u201d explains Hope. \u201cI think about LL Cool J and how he made space for that, targeting women\u2019s ears. For me and my friend group, he was magnetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drake dances with then Toronto Raptors manager Masai Ujiri in a Hotline Bling themed installation in Toronto, 2025. Photograph: Cole Burston\/Toronto Star\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

When Drake<\/a> debuted, some self-appointed gatekeepers thought that he wasn\u2019t hip-hop enough, or wasn\u2019t good enough at technical lyricism to warrant his fame. It never stopped Drake from combining his passion for southern rap maximalism with his R&B sensibilities, but in recent years it has seemed like he may have internalized the critiques from hypermasculine rap fans about the lack of agitation in his music and persona.<\/p>\n

The misogyny on 2022\u2019s collaboration album with 21 Savage, Her Loss, takes up so much space that it could have been focused group by Andrew Tate<\/a> fans. As well as appearing on Tate admirer Adin Ross\u2019s podcast and recording lonely ads<\/a> for crypto casino Stake, he was compared<\/a> to an incel after giving $50,000 to a fan who was dumped by his girlfriend. His lyrics began to feel ever more bitter and calculated: in the 2022 track Circo Loco, he seemed to make fun of Megan Thee Stallion<\/a>\u2019s 2020 shooting with the line, \u201cthis bitch lie bout getting shots but she\u2019s still a Stallion.\u201d For many female fans, it was the final straw. \u201cIf you were on the fence about still being a fan of his as a woman, that line was something where it was like \u2018I really can\u2019t get behind this,\u2019\u201d remarked Hope, who said she wants to hear an apology for that line or his friendship with Megan\u2019s attacker, Tory Lanez.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Drake has also found it increasingly difficult to bend the line between melodic songs and rapping with the fluidity that used to be his signature. Now, he\u2019s either only singing or only rapping, as his music has become digestible and hollow. He is still capable of a hit: the 2025 single Nokia<\/a> was light-hearted and winking in a way that evoked his early hits like Fancy, but its release was overshadowed by Lamar\u2019s victorious Super Bowl half-time performance, which was just weeks before. Drake has a chance to change the narrative with Iceman. He doesn\u2019t need to talk about the beef, but it would take a willingness to be honest about his place in the culture right now. I would be intrigued if Drake were to make his version of Taylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s Reputation, or a statement about what it\u2019s like being an overly criticized rap star. I\u2019m just not sure that he has it in him.<\/p>\n