From Hollywood to Home: Black Voices in Entertainment
- Fourth livestream theatrically revealed extra projects when Drake pulled out three hard drives to announce the surprise.
- Cinematic Toronto visuals featured the CN Tower, icy noir scenes, Fargo-esque winter imagery, cartoons, and surreal clips with Shane Gillis and DJ Akademiks.
- He reworked previous material, revived a flow tied to Yeat, and sampled streamer Yonna alongside comedian BenDaDonnn.
- Tone turned combative: he calls out Kendrick, hints at independence, challenges streaming era scorekeeping, and jabs at DJ Khaled over Palestine silence.
Drake’s long-teased Iceman rollout ended Friday with more music than most fans were expecting. As opposed to simply dropping what would’ve been his ninth studio album, Drizzy released a bona fide trilogy in Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour, all released simultaneously at midnight. The collective 43 songs mark Drake’s first solo full-lengths since 2023’s For All the Dogs, and a follow-up to his 2025 PartyNextDoor collaboration, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.
The reveal happened during the fourth installment of Drake’s ongoing Iceman livestream series, which aired Thursday night. During the stream, he unveiled that the hotly anticipated album would arrive alongside two additional projects. After Drake pulled out three hard drives, on-screen text reading, “I made this so that I could make this,” appeared onscreen before the additional album titles appeared.
The night started with Drake’s YouTube channel going live at 9:45, sharp. The livestream opened with a cinematic sweep through Toronto, as the camera panned around the city’s iconic CN Tower. Iceman’s opening track, “Make Them Cry,” introduces Drake in an introspective, personal mood that courses throughout the project, addressing his father’s cancer diagnosis and setting a reflective tone before the rollout widened into spectacle. From there, the stream moved through a series of visual set pieces. DJ Akademiks appeared early on, delivering a monologue aimed at Drake’s critics and online detractors. In another surreal sequence from the “Dust” video, Shane Gillis sat in the back of a cop car while Drake’s son Adonis drove, one of several bizarre comic interludes that broke up the music-video sprawl.
The visuals leaned into icy, noir-ish imagery throughout. At one point, Drake appeared in a Fargo-esque winter setting, with a dead body laying in the snow. Elsewhere, the stream shifted into cartoon animation, further expanding the strange, episodic feel of the presentation. Musically, the broadcast tied together several threads from the Iceman rollout. A flow Drake had previously premiered alongside Yeat returned in a new form, while another track incorporated a sample of popular streamer Yonna alongside comedian and Drake affiliate BenDaDonnn. Drake also revisited material fans had already heard in earlier episodes, including “National Treasures” and “Which One,” featuring Central Cee. At another point, he re-flipped a sample from “Show Me a Good Time,” turning a familiar piece of his catalog into something new. Future and Molly Santana joined Drake on the song and music video for “Ran to Atlanta,” a rebuke of one of Kendrick’s disses from “Not Like Us.” Furthering his mood of rebuttals, in the video for “Make Them Remember,” we see Drake infiltrate what appears to be a streaming bot farm, with images of walls of smartphones playing what appears to be “Not Like Us.”
The visual rollout was nearly as large as the musical one. During the livestream, Drake premiered a series of music videos connected to the albums, many of them shot in and around Toronto, all of which began appearing on Drake’s YouTube page overnight. Among the visuals released or previewed were “Plot Twist,” “Janice STFU,” “Little Birdie,” “Burning Bridges,” “Slap the City,” “National Treasures,” “Make Them Remember,” and “Dust.”
Lyrically, Drake spent much of the stream in combative mode. He repeatedly calls out Kendrick, alluding to the lingering fallout from their feud, while also seeming to address questions about his position in the rap world. At one point, he appeared to hint at going independent. He also took a pointed swipe at streaming-era scorekeeping, prodding detractors to “check your Spotify Wrapped,” folding fan metrics and online discourse directly into the music. There was plenty of smoke to go around as well. Fans online quickly noted Drake’s apparent criticism of DJ Khaled on “Make Them Pay,” where he raps, “Your people are still waiting for a ‘Free Palestine,’ but apparently everything isn’t black and white and red and green,” a reference to Khaled’s silence on Gaza despite his Palestinian heritage.
The scale of the release is unusually large even by Drake’s standards. Iceman runs 18 tracks and, on Apple Music, is listed at one hour and eight minutes, with OVO credited under exclusive license to Republic Records. Maid of Honour contains 14 songs and runs 45 minutes. Habibti adds another 11 tracks, bringing the total to 43 songs across all three albums, making them Drake’s ninth, 10th, and 11th studio albums.
The guest list spans frequent collaborators as well as several up-and-comers. Across the three albums, credited features include Future, 21 Savage, Molly Santana, Stunna Sandy, Sexyy Red, Central Cee, Popcaan, Iconic Savvy, Loe Shimmy, Qendresa, and PartyNextDoor. The album’s production leans equally expansive, with credits from Ovrkast, Riot, Boi-1da, DJ Frisco954, and others.
The album art gave each project its own identity. The cover art for Maid of Honour features a photo of Drake’s mother as a young woman, while Iceman shows a hand wearing Michael Jackson’s sequined glove. Habibti’s cover is a black-and-white photo of a woman whose face is covered in masking tape, leaving only her eyes visible. The triple release capped one of Drake’s most elaborate album rollouts. Before the albums arrived, Iceman had been promoted through a series of livestreams, music previews, and ice-themed public stunts. Drake first spoke about the album at a stop on his Anita Max Win Tour, where he said he would return with “another album” when the time was right. The rollout later included YouTube livestreams featuring snippets of songs connected to the project, including “What Did I Miss?,” “Which One,” and “Dog House.”
The most visible stunt happened in Toronto last month, when Drake installed a giant ice sculpture in a Toronto car park, with Drake promising that the release date for Iceman was hidden inside and would be revealed once the sculpture melted. Fans went at the ice with pickaxes and their hands, and Twitch streamer Kishka uncovered the May 15 date a day later. Toronto fire crews later blocked access to the sculpture and hosed it down with warm water.
The release also arrived in a specific post-beef context. Iceman was Drake’s first studio album since his 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar, a battle that culminated in Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” The song won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 2026 Grammys, according to the Recording Academy, and AP reported that Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over the song was dismissed by a federal judge in October 2025.
While Iceman was widely seen to be Drake establishing his next chapter, the final product — three albums each of different genres — arrived as a sprawling effort to reframe the conversation around his last one.
This article originally appeared on Rolling Stone.
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