After a long wait Drake finally dropped his album ICEMAN on May 15, 2026, which was officially announced on April 21, 2026 but had some teasers back in 2024. 

ICEMAN was dropped with two other unexpected albums Habibti and Maid of Honour, which adds up to a total of 40 new songs.

I was really excited for the whole end of April, just anticipating for the super hyped up album to drop and I was not disappointed. I played every single song and truly enjoyed each one.

My personal opinion was that every song was just a hit. There were a few that were disappointing, but as a huge Drake fan, I’m going to try not to be biased with my opinions on each song. I will be covering the first 3, my top 3, and the bottom 3 songs of the album.

“Make Them Cry,” which is the opening track, had to be strong and that is exactly what this song is. The beat switch mid-song was truly just phenomenal. It made it feel like there were 2 songs in 1, and the lyrics were really witty and were mainly focused on dissing Kendrick Lamar, due to their 2024 beef. A fun fact about this song is that it broke Spotify records for biggest single day streaming debut by a Hip-Hop song surpassing Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” song, which was a diss track to Drake.

“Dust,” the second song of the album, was really solid; the start was honestly pretty good, It started off kinda slow in a talking way for the first couple seconds, but then the song started and it was smooth with slow lyrics being a calm song but after the minute mark he said, “But now I gotta send it up” and the whole beat just changed and Drake was just spitting fire. He sounded hungry, like back in his early years, and it was really just great hearing this side of him again.

“Whisper My Name” is the third song of the album and it arguably had one of the best start up beats. It is just something unique and addictive and it correlated so perfectly with the end of “Dust,” feeling like the second song never ended.

In this song, he dissed Jay Z and Playboi Carti. Back in 2017, the famous question dinner with Jay-Z or 500K was made which started trending in 2023 because a dinner with Jay-Z would supposedly give you exclusive wisdom from a billionaire, which would help you exceed the cash offer in the long term. 

But Drake’s response to this was “I take 500k, not a dinner, I could never learn s**t from none of y’all” and to Playboi Cardi he said, “Baby boy please, I heard what you said to lil bro about me, Yeah, and when you run into ICEMAN, what you gon’ do except freeze? You not bout to squeeze. You not in the streets.” When he says ICEMAN he is referring to himself and he’s pretty much just saying he won’t do anything to him in person.

Once you get to “Shabang,” we are getting to the good stuff. This song was by far my personal favorite because it just had everything someone would want in a song – amazing beats, good rhythm, understandable lyrics. 

It just had it all truly a hidden gem in the bunch. It had a lot of good phrases, but my personal favorite had to be “Where is the GOAT? They need one, The mirror’s right here, I see one.” That part just really stuck in my head. 

And overall it was a great song that I have repeated a lot since its release. It was a very close tie with the second place song, but it earned its spot in the first position for me because it was just really one of a kind.

“National Treasures” was just such a good song all overall. The beat was clean and the lyrics on this song were just rich with metaphorical significance, revealing a deeper truth within them the more you paid attention to them, which makes it so much more interesting to hear over and over and over again. 

It was hard putting it here in second place because it was a really good song but I feel like for the first time listening to it, it just doesn’t compare to “Shabang.” This song is more like the more you hear it the better it gets. And one of those profound phrases was “ R.I.P Kobe, but y’all nig**s brokie, That’s why y’all be shackin’ together.” He is talking about the relationship between Kobe and Shaq, but he is also saying that you guys are broke so y’all “Shack” together like live together. And I personally found it very enjoyable trying to find meaning behind all these little phrases which there were a lot of in the song.

In “What Did I Miss?” it starts explosively and it’s definitely a very ear catching song. It did repeat a lot of the same lyrics which were “What did I miss?” but in a good way it just sounded awesome, a very close first place song but I could not put it any higher than 3rd place. 

I think Drake did a very good job with this song. It was by far one of the best, but what keeps it from going any higher is that this song was released previously back in 2025 as a solo song. But now added to the new album it really fits well and gave it the recognition it deserved.

As for the songs I didn’t like, “Little Birdie” 100 percent takes the bottom. It just sounded so artificial, and it really disappointed me coming from Drake. 

I will admit the start up beat was pretty good and had me thinking it was gonna be a great song, but it just did not meet my expectations. 

“Don’t Worry” was just a snoozefest. It was so slow and felt like a filler song that was somehow 4 minutes long. It was pretty closely tied with “Little Birdie” at the bottom, but it was a bit better. It has its moments in the song where it actually feels like a good song, but then it just goes bad. 

For “B’s On The Table” the title of the song is quite frankly 40% of the song, it was also one of the two features of the album, this one he did with 21 Savage. 

It was not bad, just quite boring and just something I would get tired of really fast. Overall it could have been better, I did see potential in it. Personally I feel like it was a waste of a featured artist. 21 was not really needed and dragged down the song a bit, but there was some solid rapping by Drake, so that’s why it’s not at the very bottom.

These last three songs – “Ran to Atlanta”, “Make Them Know”, and “2 Hard 4 The Radio” – deserve an honorable mention because they were just on par with most of my top 3 songs. 

“Ran To Atlanta” was just a masterpiece, which was the other feature in the album with Future and Molly Santana and they just did an amazing job with this song. It had a lot of nice beats to it and they transitioned the singers very well and it just really lives up to the hype and it’s really addictive to relisten over and over. 

“Make Them Know” was just a really above average song until the 3 minute mark when a good rapping good rhythm comes in with “The pleasure, don’t walk away, you’ve got your love locked up for me, oh, for me, yeah, yeah, you’ve got your love locked up for me, oh, ICEMAN, baby, why are you so cool? Freeze the world, Freeze the world, ICEMAN, baby, why are you so cool? I don’t know, but I ain’t no fool,  Freeze the world, Freeze the world, Freeze the world, Freeze the world.” 

And lastly “2 Hard 4 The Radio” was super catchy, with some hard bars, and was just a vibe and easily on par with my top 3 picks. It had a crazy beat switch and just all I would want from a Drake song and definitely something I would listen to on repeat for a long time.

Overall, the album was 100 percent worth the wait. I say this because of how hard it was picking only 3 songs at the top and how difficult it was to find 3 bad songs. 

The highs on the album are really high, but those very few were pretty low. It mostly contained a lot of beat switches which for the most part did wonders with all the songs. 

I think it could have been better, but in my opinion it is a very listenable album and I found a lot of great songs in it, so for these reasons I will be giving it an 8/10 overall score. 

ICEMAN