The last time Drake played Ireland, in February 2019, he finished the set by dancing under a giant inflatable Lamborghini, in a flourish as absurd as it was mystifying. As he loped about the stage, the question – much like the car – hung in the air: was Drake celebrating the zillionaire-rapper lifestyle or poking fun at it?
Seven years later there are no more inflatable Lambos and the air has gone out of Drake’s career after his bruising feud with Kendrick Lamar, a downturn he ruminates on in characteristic navel‑gazing fashion on his tiresome, whinge-strewn new album.
Or, more precisely, new albums. Because while the release of Iceman had been announced in advance, Drake has decided to do a Taylor Swift and simultaneously drop two bonus records, Habibti and Maid of Honour.
They add up to a glorified mutter in the dark from an artist whose superpower remains performative introspection. His kryptonite, meanwhile, is Lamar, who cut Drake’s reputation to tatters on Not Like Us. Still clocking up millions of streams, the 2024 track is perhaps the most seismic diss in popular music since Johnny Logan accused Dicky Rock of living in a “fantasy” world.
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Drake’s first meaningful response was not to go into the studio but to call his lawyer. He took a defamation case against Lamar’s label – which, awkwardly, is essentially also Drake’s, as both are part of Universal Music Group – although the action was struck down by a US court last year. He is appealing the ruling, but in the meantime he has decided to respond through music rather than litigation.
Drake can write great pop when he wants to. Unfortunately, the urge seldom takes him on Iceman, which plumbs the depths of mumblecore mediocrity across 18 listless and forgettable tracks that find the Toronto rapper at his most self‑indulgent. “I came here to turn a new leaf and finally get some sleep,” he announces on the album’s muted and muddled opening number, Make Them Cry.
Instead of coming out swinging for Lamar he plays the part of the wounded innocent. Behold the bystander caught up in someone else’s drama. “Been so paranoid that nothing in this world seems coincidental,” he observes, apparently astonished at all the vitriol coming his way.
Drake does eventually get around to throwing a punch or two. On the AutoTune-heavy Janice STFU he questions Lamar’s authenticity, suggesting that his fans aren’t real hip‑hop devotees but gatecrashers. “White kids listen to you because they feel some guilt, and that’s how your soul gets fulfilled,” he declares.
He renews the attack on the stuttering Make Them Remember. Here he accuses a rival of using Drake’s name as a “booster seat for yourselves and the lies that you tell… You always made your career off of switching teams up.”
Drake’s ire is not confined to Lamar. He has a pop at DJ Khaled – born in New Orleans to Palestinian parents – over what Drake suggests is his silence on Gaza (“your people still waiting for a Free Palestine”).
There’s real anger in these words. Alas, that rage does little to enliven either Drake’s delivery – he hovers between sounding bored and sounding listless – or the music. The beats stay locked in the same meandering fog, and, rather than speaking truth to powerful foes, Drake comes across like Robert De Niro talking to himself in Taxi Driver, a softie pretending to be a hard man but unable to follow through.
Cameos from 21 Savage and Future are every bit as anonymous as Drake’s lead turn. The LP is a rhapsody in beige that can feel almost aggressive in its blandness.
Drake v Kendrick Lamar is the biggest beef in hip‑hop since Tupac and Biggie. Having more or less maintained radio silence since Not Like Us – The Heart Part 6, his semi-official response, came and went without a trace – the expectation then was that Drake would, at the very least, lose his cool with moderately provocative results.
But for all the background heat, Iceman amounts to little more than a po-faced portrait of an artist adrift and with little to cling to beyond an enthusiastically nurtured sense of victimhood. Hell has frozen over, and nothing can melt the walls of self‑pity Drake has built around himself.
