Drake's "Iceman" Album Review

🥶👌

 

Knowing Drake dropped three albums at once, this review is exclusively for the highly anticipated Iceman alone. Let’s see how he performs after everything that went down over the last two years. Is he still operating at “Big 3” level?

 

I kinda fuck with it. It’s not bad. I think he delivered... AOTY convo for me? I’ll have to spin it more to see if it stirs anything in me. Until then, I interpret this project as a cry for help.

 

Initially, I wasn’t feeling this album. I’m an Aubrey hater — he’s corny — regardless of the fact that I genuinely mess with a lot of his catalog, even some of his more modern work. On first impression, the project felt kind of deflated. Drake sounds depressed here, but either he isn’t fully equipped with the emotional language to articulate it, or he’s only comfortable leaving breadcrumb-sized hints instead of fully opening up.

 

Because let’s be honest: after the whole battle, one thing a lot of us wanted from BBL Drizzy was introspection. Or at the very least, some direct thoughts about everything that happened. One thing I will give Drake credit for is that he usually says what he has to say on the mic. Sure, he has Twitter fingers too, but credit where it’s due — dude doesn’t really hide from conflict. Although, funnily enough, on this album he mostly just sneak-disses the man who shall not be named 😆

 

As I’ve sat with the album longer, some songs have definitely started growing on me.

 

As a hip-hop connoisseur, I want an emcee to stand out stylistically. Drake unironically does, even if he’s not necessarily my personal cup of tea. I also tend to prefer “food for the spirit” music — songs with wisdom, substance, or at least some deeper emotional insight. Surprisingly, we did get a little bit of that on this album, but he also has an almost comical amount of material centered around... materialism and women. Egoic navel-gazing. Grievances. And even more women.

 

Still, I can understand the lane he occupies within hip-hop culture: braggadocio. Even if I don’t personally respect every aspect of that lifestyle, the human experience is about embracing the duality of man sometimes. There’s a time and place for ratchet activities. Argue with your mother.

 

From a pure emcee standpoint, though, some of his flows start to feel repetitive, and there’s definitely filler if you really analyze the pen. Production-wise, most of the beats knock. I loved that he had a few solid boom-bap-inspired tracks in there too — not the typical Drake beat in my mind. A few were stylistically different — not in a bad way either — while others landed somewhere in the vein of “mid as fuck,” as the kids would say.

 

Outside of that, I’m still digging deeper into the project. I don’t really have much commentary on the petty drama he responds to throughout the album because I'm not interested to hear passive aggressive bars from a 39 year old man who dresses like a little girl.

 

For now, the 6 God gets a 6 out of 10. My man, I don’t know. Do some ayahuasca.

 

 

 

Let me know by propping if you guys would want more reviews and thoughts on hip-hop projects. It’s honestly kind of a hobby already — I’ve just never documented my spin sessions lol