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D<\/span>espite his A-list pop star status, there\u2019s been a noticeable scrappiness to Drake<\/a>\u2019s rollout for his ninth album, Iceman.<\/em> Last month, the rapper iced out his favorite courtside seats<\/a> at the Toronto Raptors\u2019 arena, with faux icicles dangling from the chairs. He followed that up with a more brazen stunt: a huge block of ice<\/a> in downtown Toronto for the public to chip at until it thawed, revealing the album date. In early May, he debuted a quirky episodic series<\/a> on YouTube featuring skits in an ice manufacturing plant and the rapper driving an Iceman-branded truck around Toronto. The mood seemed cheeky and defiant: good news for anyone who missed the memester of his 2016 viral hit Hotline Bling.<\/p>\n It has been an eventful and complicated<\/a> time for Drake since his most recent solo studio album, 2023\u2019s For All the Dogs<\/a>. <\/em>While he is still the most-streamed rapper in the world, he has been attacked by hip-hop. Two years ago, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar<\/a> and Drake engaged in a battle that no one came out of unscathed. There were accusations<\/a> of intimate partner violence towards Lamar, a song<\/a> about a possible daughter that Drake has hidden, and Lamar\u2019s Grammy-winning death blow \u2013 Not Like Us<\/a> \u2013 about Drake being a hip-hop \u201ccolonizer\u201d who chases after young women. Consensus has said that he lost the beef between him and Lamar, and the consensus is right, but the backlash against Drake was already starting to formulate before Lamar issued the first warning shot in 2024 diss track Like That.<\/p>\n