Drake, Iceman ★★★ / Habibti ★ / Maid of Honour ★★★★
Suddenly releasing three albums at once is a wild flex of your boundless creativity, a cynical strategy for streaming domination, or a way to middle-finger the record label you’re currently in the midst of suing by running out your remaining contract as quickly as possible. With his anticipated comeback, this is where Canadian superstar Drake has left us.
The three albums function as a sort of “pick your fighter” gambit: Iceman is Drake as fallen rap superstar out for revenge; Habibti is Downbeat Drake in toxic self-pity mode; Maid of Honour is Drake as cosmopolitan pop innovator.
Iceman is the album we’d expected, the one Drake all but had to make after his public evisceration at the hands of Kendrick Lamar during their spectacular feud of ’24. It’s lonely and defensive, a man reckoning with being attacked from all angles.
“My sixth sense is kicking in ’cause all I’m seeing is people that are dead to me,” he raps on Make Them Pay. He’s targeting Kendrick with short jokes (“Even Muggsy Bogues dunked once,” he raps on scorched earth highlight Make Them Remember), fake fans, and a wave of Judases he feels betrayed him during the summer of Not Like Us including DJ Khaled and LeBron James (“You always made your career off of switchin’ teams up”).
If his anger and bitter paranoia is compelling – even when it’s unconvincing: “16 hours ahead in Melbourne, I don’t even know what’s going on back home, straight,” he raps about being in Australia the day Lamar’s Super Bowl triumph occurred, as though the internet doesn’t reach us – it’s in a Unabomber-scribbling-a-hit-list-in-his-cabin kind of way.
Drake’s in prime emcee mode on Iceman but 18 tracks of it is exhausting, like you’re being subjected to a friend’s endless tirades against a co-worker. Halfway through, you’re making like Elsa and chanting, “Let it go … ”
The less said about Habibti, the better. It’s a slog, Drake at his most charmless and self-pitying, sleepwalking through noxious quips he should have left in the WhatsApp chat with his manosphere bros (“You don’t have a gag reflex, it’s blowing my mind”). We should be grateful he put them all in one place so they can be so easily avoided.
Of all three, Maid of Honour is the welcome surprise. It’s sprawling, experimental, weird, fun and brimming with hooks. Its outlook is determinedly global. It feels like a template for tomorrow’s pop charts.
The pulsing house beats of Hoe Phase and New Bestie play like validation for those of us who knew Drake’s late-period “night bus after the club” opus Honestly, Nevermind was the right idea. The fizzy ’80s electro of Road Trips and Stuck are destined for radio domination, while Cheetah Print turns Peggy Gou’s house hit (It Goes Like) Nanana into infectious Miami bass.
Even a closing emo number – that sounds like Drake holed up with a guitar in one of his mansion’s 10 bedrooms to figure out how to crunch out the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind – is oddly endearing.
Drake’s often accused of being a “culture vulture” (or as Kendrick put it, “a coloniser”), but his internationalist bent is always where his best pop instincts lie. He is, after all, the guy who made the hookah lounge a staple of modern hip-hop, who might suddenly rap a verse in Spanish, Arabic, French or a Caribbean Patois. Toronto – like Sydney or Melbourne – is a city of immigrants and Drake’s long lassoed its pluralist influence into his music.
Maid of Honour might be the ultimate expression of Drake as cross-cultural agitator. On Which One, he vamps at the club with UK drill star Central Cee; on Amazing Shape, he works a dancehall groove with Jamaican singer Popcaan. On Hoe Phase, a sudden beat-switch incorporates South African gqom and icy EDM; on BBW, it’s marauding Brazilian baile funk.
In contrast to Lamar’s insular Not Like Us, a NIMBY anthem for Trump’s America, it makes Maid of Honour an even better revenge than Iceman. Forget going back to Cali, Drake at his best claims the world.
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Robert Moran is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
