Hi everyone, Winter Melon here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Drake album, ICEMAN.

Here we have the newest and 9th full-length solo album from Toronto rapper, singer, songwriter Aubrey Drake Graham, the boy himself, with one of the most anticipated records of the year, if not the decade.

A moment that, despite all the forced smiles and proxy posts about big opening day numbers for this project, has more or less boiled down to a ripping the band-aid off type moment, the likes of which we have never seen from a Drake rollout before.

Like, the way this man has unflinchingly released some of the laziest projects of his whole career without even second-guessing himself, be it either More Life or Honestly, Nevermind. And yet it took years for Drake to figure out what he was going to do on Iceman. Working from a place of disarray, out in the open the entire time.

Because what a lot of Drake's fans have built up to be a methodical, ambitious rollout has just been one long ongoing distraction for Drake to figure out what his next move or sure bet is gonna be. Something I don't entirely fault Drake for, because losing the biggest battle in hip-hop history by a wide margin would most likely put anyone in a position where they are, you know, uh, thinking twice about what they're gonna do next. This was likely also worsened by the L's that Drake was taking in the courtroom, too.

And believe it or not, in the last 2 years Drake has done so much promo, dropped so many songs, despite the fact that numerous delusional voices come out of the woodwork every week to build this narrative that hip-hop is worse off without Drake and 'the game isn't the same without him.'

But, like, Drake is very much here. Not only was there a short film Iceman episodic series of videos that mostly served to put out song clips of ideas that Drake was kind of, you know, beta testing for the record, obviously. But the dude also dropped multiple demos, song sketches, stuff through that @plottttwistttttt account, whatever the hell 100 Gigs was, even singles like "What Did I Miss?" that dropped in July of last year that everybody somehow forgot about because nobody's been listening to that damn song since – not to mention the track didn't even make it to number 1 and tumbled down the charts pretty quickly after its peak.

Drake also did songs with Yeat and 21 Savage that were also pretty quickly forgotten, a "Hey There Delilah" cover that I never want to think about again, and of course that whole $ome $exy $ongs 4 U collaborative album with PARTYNEXTDOOR, one of the most drab projects he has ever put out, save for "NOKIA," which was the closest thing to a broadly appealing smash that Drake has delivered in the last few years.

All of this points to a reality that I feel like a lot of Drake's biggest fans are having a hard time facing, that the boy doesn't really have the juice quite like he used to. Not to say Drake isn't still one of the most popular hip-hop artists on the planet, one of the most streamed, he certainly is, but I think the days of milk and honey, of Drake stimulus packages, of him being able to shape the mainstream layer of hip-hop merely by dropping a song that goes into a new direction — yeah, I think that's all done.

Be it either due to the beef, or years of self-fulfilling prophecy packed into every album for the last 6 or 7 years, where Drake is throwing out endless subliminals alongside all of these proclamations of how alone and isolated he is in the world, how lonely it is at the top. And now, more than ever, on ICEMAN, that really does seem to be the world he is living in. And that already seemed like it was the case on For All The Dogs — now it is worse.

And even if the first day numbers on this album are impressive, which they were, I don't think long-term this is a sustainable model for Drake. Because Drake historically is nothing if not a collaborator, an adopter of different styles and regional music trends. And that has depended on the willingness of other artists from whatever world he is trying to emulate to bring him along the way and legitimize whatever it is he's attempting. But during the beef, Kendrick effectively called out Drake's habit of, uh, doing accents on tracks, as well as running to Atlanta for legitimacy on "Not Like Us," and I think that has poisoned the well a little bit.

But even this, I think, would be an easy workaround for Drake if there was a really obvious sound direction or new hit tune on the charts that he could easily glom onto, and there really isn't. I mean, in the lead-up to this project, there haven't really been too many rap artists with, uh, number one hits, top ten hits.

Also, recent flirtations with more underground sounds, rage-adjacent esthetics, uh, that Drake has done have been passable at best. What few attempts he's made at going for a more Latin sound have been laughable, like on "MEET YOUR PADRE." And while, yeah, there are a lot of exciting new voices out there on the scene when it comes to female rappers, Molly Santana is handily the worst feature on this entire project. And a lot of Drake's fans don't even mess that heavily with Sexyy Red, who he seems to enjoy collaborating with the most these days.

Whether it's dancehall or drill, I will give Drake credit in doing an admirable job of worming his way into these worlds and dropping widely appealing hits that really prove his versatility. And given his history of that, you have to kind of wonder, why not cross over and collaborate with a BTS or even a Morgan Wallen right now? For an artist as big and as widely appealing as Drake, if he was focused purely on the music, you would think that's what he'd be doing.

But in the last few years, he's been way more focused on building a rapport with online gambling addicts and streamers who have credible rape allegations and have been recorded having sexual conversations with minors.

So, lack of a new direction, a new musical wave to ride, makes it even more likely that Drake is gonna spend the bulk of this record addressing the elephant in the room, because the biggest question going through the minds of many in the lead-up to this record is, "How will Drake address having suffered such a miserable loss?" And the approach is something I'm sure he's been wrestling with for these two full whole years, and yet somehow he still landed essentially on something that reads very clearly as bitter, sad, obsessed, and make-believe.

Because the bulk of Iceman's most memorable moments kinda boil down to Drake calling out everyone who has switched up on him. And deserved or not, putting all of these names on blast so repeatedly actually does weigh down the entertainment value of this record. Not only because much of the time it's not that witty, but it's also kinda low-hanging fruit, too. Like, getting a few bars off on a goofball like DJ Khaled is not some lyrical feat, even if you are making a valid point about Palestine in the process. And while some bars and retorts might actually have something to them, they're going through the net long after the shot clock has run out.

Like, for example, maybe a flip on the phrase "What is it, the braids?" would have actually, like, hit pretty hard in the midst of the battle, but 2 years later, this just feels like the rap equivalent to, uh, thinking of what you should have said during an argument that happened a week ago.

Still, Drake insists on making the lumps he took in the midst of this battle ICEMAN's focus, to the point where the only way I could imagine anyone enjoying this whole entire album is if you are currently carrying some sort of insecurity or trauma as a Drake fan, and now this album is an opportunity to enact some kind of revenge or something. Which is a level of parasocial insanity that should have you committed in a just society.

Of course, in reality, the door closed on Drake being able to control the narrative around this loss a long time ago, back when "THE HEART PART 6" dropped, his "THE HEART PART 6." However, that clearly isn't going to stop him or his fans from pretending like they can rewrite history, and act like first-day numbers for this album, uh, somehow speak louder than a bruised ego.

In a lot of ways, ICEMAN and its rollout is kind of a reflection of our world now. Because like or dislike of this album and its content goes beyond just mere preference and opinion at this point. It's a reflection of groups of music fans, even people who are into politics, living in completely different realities.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in the track "Make Them Remember," which leaked hours before this record's official release and was, uh, originally — unofficially, I guess— titled "1am in Albany," which in a lot of ways runs like your usual Drake diatribe, slow trap beat, moody filtered soul sample hanging quietly in the background, which is the perfect setting for Drake to very slowly and steadily drop one double entendre and piece of wordplay after another, as a means of laying out everything that has been on his mind for the past 2 years.

And as a lyrical exercise, the track definitely does have some notable moments, but by that same token, there are just as many lyrical duds and dragged-out vendettas that nobody sane cares about 2 years later. Like, do I really give a shit about the state of LeBron and Drake's relationship? No. Maybe if I was mentally in high school? And the same goes for bars that point out how much shorter Kendrick is than Drake...Okay, you got bodied by a short guy...

And all of this goes doubly for trying to sell us on the idea that there's an element of fascism to the dislike of Drake, with this one piece of wordplay saying that it's essentially a nazi-type thought to not want to see Drake at the top of hip-hop. Which, PAUSE, is insane. Like, we're really gonna push the narrative that Kendrick is working like some kind of Nazi angle here? Even as Drake's favorite streamer, Adin Ross, loves to collaborate with Nick Fuentes, and has complimented him numerous times.

All this track goes to show is just how much the beef has been on Drake's mind for the past 2 years. And as punishment, he's gonna make all of us relive it through his point of view and self-imposed martyrdom. And of course, there's an irony to titling this track "Make Them Remember" too, because this screed is essentially what has been on every hip-hop fan's timeline for the past year. Unfortunately, no one has forgotten. We haven't been given the chance to forget.

Also, sidebar: this song inadvertently shows just how much grace Jay-Z had after losing his battle to Nas back in the day, because within a similar span of time, Jay-Z returned and gave us "99 Problems," "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," and "Encore." And as great as Nas and as "Ether" was, as much of a power move that track was, ultimately it didn't matter because Jay was the master of his own reality and the ultimate dictator of his narrative, and showed us that through good lyricism and giving the fans what they wanted — good music, not just grievance masquerading as music.

Conversely, with ICEMAN, Drake can't help but confirm pretty much all of the worst criticisms against him: that he's a duplicitous creep and numbers-obsessed clout goblin. Even the cover of this record seems like a massive misstep. You're telling me, during an album cycle where Drake is trying to get people to forget accusations that he has, uh, an interest in people who are underage, you want to liken yourself to Michael Jackson?

And even if you boil Drake's obsession with Mike down to merely a numbers thing due to the success that he saw during his career, the idea that Drake has ever been on Mike's level artistically, or even commercially, is a fantasy. No matter what the streams say.

Like "Make Them Cry," the opening track on this record, the most played on Spotify — because, obviously, most people are gonna hear the first track on an album, everyone's trying — yeah, on Spotify it quickly went number 1, and then was immediately dethroned by "Billie Jean," a track that's been surging up the charts again because of hype around the recent Michael Jackson biopic. But while Drake did actually drop some really prominent first-day numbers with this album cycle, we can't ignore the fact that he also saw fit to drop 2 additional albums.

Which, chatter around the internet right now is that, uh, he did it to finish out his UMG deal, but we can't pretend that creating a big numerical splash with so many songs wasn't a part of the calculus here. Now, MAID OF HONOUR and HABIBTI are still very much worth assessing in my eyes. I'm just not going to do it in this review, and I will save it for another one.

ICEMAN here, though, like I said, kicks off with the song "Make Them Cry," and even though this track is far from Drake's best opener, there are some real and confessional moments in the midst of it, with Drake confessing that the beef really fucked him up, a part of him died, and now he feels very alone. There aren't going to be as many features on this project as a result.

And lines where he's talking about having to treat his father like his son's older brother, in a way, are kind of devastating and say a lot about the context in which Drake had to grow up.

However, there are still issues with this track. Eventually, it kind of loses its thematic focus, and Drake once again finds himself telling stories about women who won't love him no matter how much money he throws at them. Which, you would figure 'Numbers Man' would be able to math the math on that by now, nearing the age of 40, but I guess not, and every time he dips back into this thematic pool it feels more and more like an incel bedtime story.

Of course, Drake's persistently deflated delivery and beat-switch dependency are problems too, because on ICEMAN, whenever Drake feels like he can't further develop a song, the best way to make it continue is to just introduce a random beat and go some other direction. Thankfully, the song "Dust" is a little bit better and more focused, uh, definitely a track you might wanna throw on the gym playlist, even though the track has a total non-sequitur intro that's, um, very much skippable.

Though it's interesting that Drake makes reference to being in Australia at the time of recording, making reference to the 2025 tour that he didn't finish, and purposefully orchestrated so that he wouldn't be on the continent of North America during the time that Kendrick was going to be performing at the Super Bowl.

So you can't really bullshit listeners acting like, "Aw man, I'm over in Australia, I wonder what's going on at home right now, I don't even know." At least the track has a banger beat. I love the "blow the dust off your plaques" refrain. But still, at the end of the day, the whole song is an exercise in willful ignorance.

"What was the year that they say you had slaps? / 'Cause I don't remember it goin' like that / I don't remember one word in your raps / I don't know nothin' 'bout you on them tracks." Like, plugging your ears and pretending your competition isn't making a dent would be an easier pill to swallow if you were actually able to nail down a no. 1 in the lead-up to this project, but you weren't.

Meanwhile, "Whisper My Name" does have a decently strong start to it, but this track is still further proof of Drake's inability to follow through on a song idea right now.

I mean, the eerie, cold-blooded tone this track kicks off with is really solid, and does a pretty good job of painting Drake as this larger-than-life figure who kind of haunts the industry in a way. But all of this quickly dissipates after a beat and flow switch that nobody asked for, as Drake moves into some of the worst similes on the entire project. "This shit like the bag that you bring on the plane, it's gon' carry-on / These boys dress up and talk like they somebody, shit is like Comic-Con. And it's only several tracks into this record that Drake's most obvious collaborators and influences start to rub off on him in the worst way.

Like on "Janice STFU," which features that warbly vocal effect that we heard Lil Yachty hit us with when he took the walk to Poland. The track still features one of the best beats and choruses on the entirety of ICEMAN. It just goes off the delulu deep end with some bars in the second half: "White kids listen to you 'cause they feel some guilt / And that's how your soul gets fulfilled / Handin' out turkeys on camera inside of your hood / Then you go back to the hills." Which reads about as tone-deaf as those bars on "Family Matters" where Drake was talking about, uh, Kendrick rapping like he's gonna free the slaves.

Which, for sure, Kendrick isn't a perfect or uncritiqueable figure when it comes to his politics or his activism. But the way Drake frames it on bars like these, it feels like he thinks putting anything pro-black in your music is just cheap and lame. Not to mention, this question could also be flipped on Drake, who also has a very predominantly white audience, and ask, 'Why do white people listen to Drake? So they can feel comfortable in male aggrievement, 'cause that's all I'm hearing so far on this record.

The song "Ran To Atlanta," unfortunately, is further proof that Kendrick Lamar is in this man's head. Drake was made fun of for constantly going down to Atlanta to get beats and get collaborators, and he does it once again here, just to prove a point, I guess. The problem is, is that he's doing it with a song that frankly sucks.

The Molly Santana feature on this thing is terrible, one of the most low-effort, phoned-in features on any Drake record. The okay whisper ad-libs are not doing what Drake thinks they are doing. And also, there is a feature from Future on this track I have neglected to mention, and this might be the lowest amount of chemistry these two have shown on a track so far. Also, what happened to 'staying on your side?' Not hearing it from people who, uh, switched up and all that. This man played a not inconsequential role in tipping the first domino that led to you getting called a Pedialyte drinker during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Why is he here? If Drake can just so easily throw his feelings out the window due to desperation for a hit and to prove a point against one guy, then why should his fans carry water for any of the problems and issues that he's whining about throughout this entire album? Especially when this track features generic production, multiple beat switches, forgettable back and forths, the track really doesn't even hold a candle to some of the best bangers Atlanta has been dropping over the past 10 to 15 years.

The track "Shabang" only highlights a further lack of inspiration on Drake's part. We get hit with what's essentially an old 21 Savage flow that Drake is doing nothing with. There's also some random Migos ad-libs in the background that aren't elevating things much, a Bryson Tiller nod too that's kind of okay. The production has some buttery chipmunk soul chops, a basic trap beat, and Drake's delivery isn't really fiery enough to do much else other than inspire some light head-nodding. It's passable. I guess it's fine if you need something to play in the car while you're making your way down to the corner store to buy some boner pills.

Then "Make Them Pay" is a truly oblivious and tone-deaf song. I'm not sure if Drake being a Lil Wayne protégé has ever worked against him more here. Because simultaneously, Drake wants us to hold space for the bitterness that he has against those who wronged him. While demanding that we take him seriously as he dishes out Jalen Hurts similes and in bars like "I rack up a tab in Chanel 'cause I do buy everything like I'm Middle Eastern," I wish Drake would realize that bars such as these don't really work through welling eyes and slouched shoulders.

Then there's the song "Burning Bridges," which is too boring, too slow, a waste of time, throw it out. It's like an old Kodak Black flow, but Drake somehow sounds even more zonked out than Kodak, while he simultaneously references a classic bar from "Back to Back," which obviously came up in the midst of a beef he actually won. Why you would want to remind us of a point in time when you were objectively much better at rapping and picking beats, too, I don't know.

Then there's "National Treasures," which to me just kinda feels like the longer this album goes on, the less of a purpose it serves. Not only because whatever momentum this track does build up in the first half is just completely obliterated by a beat switch with a downgraded groove and flow, a build-up to a drop that never really shows up, at least not at a time to where it matters. And Drake, honest to God, ends this song with the words, uh, "How you dudes go from asking for some tickets? Now you dudes tryina to stop the show / Ironic, 'cause the Iceman was a nice man, now I'm hot and cold." 'The Iceman was a nice man?'

Really, the midpoint of this whole record is a goddamn no man's land. It's so dejected and so hollow that even 21 Savage doesn't sound like he wants to be there. Meanwhile, Drake doesn't even feel like he can fully commit to the accent bit on the song "Plot Twist." Come on, man, you're doing kind of a UK thing here. Just, just do the accent like you normally would. You're basically just barely tiptoeing over the line; you might as well.

Meanwhile, "What Did I Miss?" somehow sounds more punchy and lively in comparison with everything else here. And yeah, it's a track that misses that special something that makes so many big Drake songs anthemic, be it either "God's Plan," "Headlines," "Best I Ever Had," and so on and so forth. But again, it's still more of a thrill than most of what's here, so I can kinda see why it made it onto the record even though it's so old now.

Really, the most eventful track around the middle third of this project is the most confusing. That would be the song "2 Hard 4 the Radio," a track that on the surface, uh, many are obviously noting as a Mac Dre tribute. But there are some deeper intentions to this song, especially as we move into the second half, because the whole track just feels like an exercise in mockery against Kendrick, who adopted a very local sound on his latest record, and the West Coast at large, where Drake has been kind of a laughingstock as of late.

So in that respect, it's hard not to read this track as just straight-up disrespectful, uh, much in the same way the "Taylor Made Freestyle" was, where he was doing the whole Tupac AI voice emulation thing. So again, when you really think of it, how else can you read this track other than Drake just going out of his way to be a dick and disrespectful toward a legendary sound and song? Or at the very least, cheapening it by using it to get a nudge in edge-wise against a guy you don't like.

Unfortunately, the final moments of this record don't get much better. The song "Little Birdie" has all of this mangled, awful vocal processing, really thin mixing that makes the whole track sound like a demo. It just sounds like crap in comparison to most of what's here. I don't know why it's on the record at all.

Then the song "Don't Worry" features these repeated, mind-numbing vocal leads that Drake beats into the ground for four straight minutes. And it's funny, on this record, when Drake has like actually a very decent, very solid song idea, he only plays it out partially and immediately switches up into a totally different thing.

But when he finds a mediocre idea, that's when he decides to repeat it until it's nearly torture. Great songwriting. Really good songwriting. Then "Firm Friends," whose title makes me really sad because I was kind of hoping Drake would be referring to his friends at the law firm on this track. The track does feature some really classy Conductor Williams production, but Drake continues to insist on not letting things go and being annoying.

"You think I didn't see that you stayed silent / that's like you endorsing it all, may as well stand behind him." Again, if that's really how you feel, and that's all it takes, why is Future on this record? What did that man have to do to get back into your good graces? As far as the structure of this track goes, it's like one long, sad run-on sentence of complaints and self-affirmations that I'm sure his fans will eat up.

And then, when it comes to the closer "Make Them Know" – which if you haven't noticed is a part of this 4-part song series: "Make Them Cry," "Make Them Pay," "Make Them Remember," "Make Them Know" – of these four tracks, the vibe on this one is the most rancid, and somehow here Drake sounds even more defeated vocally than he was on "THE HEART PART 6."

Not only that, but he drops matching moronic similes like "I reserve the shit like I'm indigenous," "I reserve it like I'm aboriginal." Yeah, I'm sure aboriginal and indigenous people, like, really felt themselves being seen on those bars.

But more importantly, not only do we hear massive amounts of cope on this song, with Drake mentioning not even wanting to submit this album to a Grammy evaluation process, because he knows they won't even consider it. But the song has the worst ending of any Drake closing track ever. Which I'll get into, but first I wanna say: I don't think Iceman is Drake's worst album, period. But I do think it is his most sorry-ass record so far when it comes to his core projects, what we view as, like, you know, kind of a normal Drake album, uh, be it Take Care, Views, Nothing Was The Same, For All the Dogs, which at the time was a notable step up over CLB.

This record is Drake at his saddest, his lowest point ever. And the silver lining to all of that, in my view, is that I would hope it can really only go up from here. Like, this is really pretty much rock bottom. However, I don't want to hold my breath due to the way he finishes this final track up, saying, "What happened to Drake from 2009 / When all of the moments was intimate? / What happened to Drake with the innocence? / I don't think we'll be seein' him again.

Which has to be the most cringe anime villain origin story bullshit any rapper has ever put onto their album, ever. Like, 'I lost my innocence at the tender age of 40, and now the whole world has to pay?' 'You'll never be seeing my kind side ever again?' Like, this is a temper tantrum.

Yeah, I'm feeling a light 2 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano. Drake. Forever.