Apparently, to get back at Kendrick Lamar, a man needs to work the hardest. Drake has now dropped not 1 but a total of 3 albums to find some sort of spotlight in music again since his feud with Grammy-winner Lamar almost saw him vanish away for some time.
Rap beefs are obviously common. With diss tracks making any album the mos entertaining bit of it. In 2024, what began as lyrical chest-thumping between Drake and Lamar fans (and of course, the two men), has only evolved to become into lawsuits, memes, halftime roasts and a surprise triple album drop.
The Canadian rapper has dropped Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour, all at once. With 43 tracks spread across rap, R&B, and dance music, the triple album is not only leaning into excessive, mildly unhinged and full of subtexts for his arch-nemesis, Kendrick Lamar, whose Not Like Us became known worldwide- even amongst the non-Lamar fans who not only knew every word of the song but also knew the beef between the two rappers.
On Iceman, Drake appears bruised, reflective, occasionally bitter, and deeply aware of how public the whole humiliation became. For the longest time, his branding couched mental health and isolation through his music. In no time, he was knee-deep into firing at Kendrick Lamar's carefully curated image if community activism in Compton. Elsewhere on the album, stray shots seem aimed at everyone from LeBron James to DJ Khaleed and more who drifted toward Team Kendrick.
Well, if you were not invited to the listening party, 43 tracks is a lot of songs to listen to. Even more in terms of the streaming era-standards where the length of a song has had downsizing. Is it to dominate the algorithms on streaming platforms like Spotify then? Is it to inflate chart numbers with the logic: the more the merrier?
But the three albums don't come close to tapping the same mood. They are sonically distinct. While Iceman grooves towards a confessional mood, Habibti is oozes late-night R&B texts-you-shouldn't-send vibe, whereas, Maid of Honour is a glossy dance-floor melancholy. The jabs are through his music this time. But that's only half-baked truth.
For the rollout of the album, Drake turned Toronto into an Iceman theme park last month with a giant piece of ice sculpture containing the album release date was propped up.
Aside, all the gimmicks to announce his comeback and reignite the feud with Kendrick Lamar, is Iceman worth spending an entire day listening to it?
Well, let's start with some of the lyrics like Ironic, 'cause the Iceman was a nice man/now I'm hot and cold; check signing is my kink/pushing out ink/I feel like a... squid...may not be the best expression of Drake's flair of writing. But then again, much of his music has been written in collaboration. Much of Iceman feels trapped in the same creative loop that has haunted Drake for years now: recycled flows, disses that don't feel powerful. That same tension defines the album and much worse it sounds like its obligated to respond to Kendrick fallout.
Drake spends much of the album insisting on his relevance instead of simply embodying it. However, Make Them Cry, offers a rare glimpse of the artist sounding genuinely vulnerable.
Much of the triple-drop album amplifies the feeling of them being his reaction to the Internet culture. But, that doesn't mean, it totally sounds like a man defeated, perhaps more like an artist trapped inside the machinery of his own celebrity.