If everything was stripped away from Aubrey Graham tomorrow, one thing he’d have in abundance is audacity. After two years of cryptic livestreams and a release date frozen inside a block of Toronto ice, the world braced for ‘Iceman’. Drake needed his ninth studio album, coming three years after 2023’s ‘For All The Dogs’, to be a slam-dunk career revival following his aura-shattering beef with Kendrick Lamar.
But instead of letting the music speak for itself, he surprise-dropped three albums – ‘Iceman’, ‘Maid of Honour’ and ‘Habibti’ – without warning. It’s equally the most thrilling and chaotic thing he’s ever done in a long time. Here’s the thing about the triple drop, which, for purposes of this review, we’re treating as a trilogy: they’re not Drake at his best, even if it’s undeniable that he still can make palatable, radio-friendly pop-adjacent music.
‘Iceman’ is easily the strongest of the three. Across 18 tracks, Drake attempts to tap back into the slick, laidback sharpness of his ‘Comeback Season’ era, delivering some of his least bloated rap in years. ‘Make Them Cry’ sees him swinging at worldwide mockery and his diminishing dominance with an almost pitiful whine, but there are genuine flashes of the emotional intelligence that once made him rap’s defining diarist.
Opening up about his father’s cancer diagnosis and the exhaustion of constant scrutiny on the song, he admits: “I’m ’bout to turn forty, dog, I’m battlin’ agin’ / I’m battlin’ the fact that the album ain’t even drop and already they asses complainin’.” ‘Make Them Pay’ and ‘Make Them Know’ similarly work because Drake finally sounds his age instead of endlessly chasing younger rappers’ cadences.
Even the tougher moments land more convincingly than usual. ‘Dust’ and ‘2 Hard 4 The Radio’ still indulge Drake’s favourite pastime of pretending he’s a mob boss, with the Bay Area inflections of the latter acting as a not-so-subtle Kendrick nudge. But ‘Ran To Atlanta’ genuinely works: flipping Lamar’s accusations that he relies on Atlanta rappers for relevance, Drake reunites with former frenemy Future and underground rager Molly Santana for his most believable aggressive performance in years. It’s less cartoon cosplay, more bitter former king keeping score through gritted teeth: “All you pussy boys losin’ it and you need to take meds / When I tell you dip ’cause it’s Ice time, bitch, it ain’t the fake feds.”
After ‘Iceman’, though, the trilogy slowly slips into diminishing returns. ‘Habibti’ and ‘Maid Of Honour’ are so gossamer they almost evaporate on impact: expensive, mood-setting records designed for nothing more than passive consumption. Drake revisits familiar territory across both albums – toxic late-night confessionals, dancefloor escapism and half-hearted heartbreak – but rarely with enough specificity to make these songs linger. Increasingly, Drake writes in Instagram captions and hyper-relatable tweets, sanding complicated emotions down into digestible aphorisms. Where earlier records found devastating detail inside insecurity and loneliness, these albums often settle for vague luxury melancholy.
Still, there are bright spots scattered throughout the haze. The Popcaan-assisted ‘Amazing Shape’ is a warm ode to Drake’s long-standing connection to Jamaican music with one of dancehall’s defining modern voices. Meanwhile, the woozy Loe Shimmy collaboration ‘I’m Spent’ cleverly links Drake to rap’s new generation of emotionally unravelling crooners, with Shimmy’s rawness briefly injecting urgency into Drake’s increasingly polished world. Even the ridiculous ‘Cheetah Print’ with Sexyy Red – built around a ‘Cha Cha Slide’ sample – is dumb enough to become accidentally addictive.
Was this three-album stunt a ploy to get Drake out of his recording contract? Possibly. Did dropping so much music at once dilute its impact? Most definitely. But, you cannot deny that these records – ‘Iceman’, in particular – are some of Drake’s strongest work in a while. The trilogy doesn’t restore Drake’s invincibility, but beneath the spectacle and the streaming bait is an ageing superstar still stubbornly clinging onto his crown with both fists.
