On April 20, a giant ice sculpture appeared in a Toronto car park, courtesy of Drake. The rapper promised that the release date for his endlessly teased ninth studio album, Iceman, was stowed away somewhere inside, and would be revealed once the ice had melted. Naturally, his fans responded by taking to the sculpture with pickaxes and their bare hands. A day later, the Twitch streamer Kishka uncovered the date in an outer block: May 15. On the night of April 21, Toronto fire crews called time on the stunt, blocking access to the sculpture and hosing it down with warm water, Toronto City News reports. Pitchfork has reached out to Drake’s team for confirmation of the release date.
Iceman is the rapper’s first solo effort since 2023’s For All the Dogs—not to mention the first since his earth-scorching battle with Kendrick Lamar. Drake first spoke of the record’s existence at the top of last year. “When the time is right, I’ll be back with another album—a one-on-one conversation with y’all that you need to hear,” he said during a stop on his Anita Max Win Tour. He later teased the project during a series of YouTube livestreams, which featured snippets of new songs presumably on the album, including “What Did I Miss?,” “Which One” featuring Central Cee, and “Dog House” featuring Yeat and Julia Wolf.
In addition to the tour and livestream, Drake stayed productive throughout 2025, with a Valentine’s Day release of $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, his collaborative album with PartyNextDoor, and a federal court’s dismissal of his defamation suit against Universal Music Group, over its promotion of Lamar’s diss-track “Not Like Us.” “Although the accusation that Plaintiff [Drake] is a pedophile is certainly a serious one, the broader context of a heated rap battle, with incendiary language and offensive accusations hurled by both participants, would not incline the reasonable listener to believe that ‘Not Like Us’ imparts verifiable facts about Plaintiff,” wrote Judge Vargas.
