Who is Drake mad at on Iceman? Short answer: just about everyone who drifted away during his 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar, plus the record label he sued. The album, the best known of the three he released on Friday (May 15), is Drake settling scores. Rolling Stone counted a roster of “enemies and adversaries.”
Is this a Kendrick album?
Less than the build-up suggested. Complex notes that Drake “never says the name” and that few lines “twist the knife deeper.” He swings at the idea of the “Big 3” on “Make Them Pay” (“there was too many chefs in the kitchen, it was a mess to begin with”), jokes about Kendrick’s height with a Muggsy Bogues line on “Make Them Remember,” and, on “Janice STFU,” takes his hardest jab: “White kids listen to you ’cause they feel some guilt and that’s how your soul gets fulfilled.”
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The sharpest barb is about streaming. Drake suggests the “Not Like Us” numbers were padded, rapping, “Who is this guy for real/I guess a magician/100 million streams vanished, no one got questions.” That echoes the claims in his 2025 lawsuit against UMG, which accused the label of promoting “Not Like Us” in a way that falsely painted him as a criminal. Pitchfork reads the whole thing as notably “less virulent” than his last diss, “The Heart Part 6.”
Who gets it worse?
A$AP Rocky, by most counts. Complex says no one gets it worse on the album. On “Burning Bridges,” Drake raps, “Your baby momma ain’t even post a single,” a line Rolling Stone reads as aimed at Rocky and Rihanna. Rocky said earlier this year that the two were once friends and that he thinks “it’s over females,” and fans heard a shot at Drake on Don’t Be Dumb’s “Stole Ya Flow.”
What about everyone else?
The list is long. Rick Ross, who told Hot 97 on May 12 that “Don’t nobody fear Drake’s album release,” gets a line about aiding his streams “before Adin Ross had ever streamed.” DJ Khaled is called out on “Make Them Pay” for his silence on Gaza; Rolling Stone points out that Drake signed an Artists4Ceasefire open letter in October 2023. LeBron James gets “Please stop askin’ about what’s goin’ on with 23 and me,” after he appeared at Kendrick’s 2024 Kia Forum show. Mustard, who produced “Not Like Us,” is told, “you ain’t had one since me and YG rapped.” Playboi Carti and Jay-Z are in there too.
And the label?
That is the other thread. All three albums are released “under exclusive license to Republic Records,” and Drake keeps asking to leave: “Swear my label gotta free me baby” on “Janice STFU,” and on “Make Them Pay,” “I’m better off independent.” His suit named UMG and its chairman Lucian Grainge, not Kendrick. Pitchfork notes the number of albums he still owes the label hasn’t been made public.
Where does Lykke Li fit?
She isn’t a target. “Janice STFU” interpolates her 2011 hit “I Follow Rivers,” and she told Rolling Stone, “It has that raw, revenge, hip-hop energy.” She added that she’d been “craving” Drake lately and listening to “Marvins Room.”
What happens next?
Chart numbers for all three albums are due in the coming days, and Rocky’s reported second disc of Don’t Be Dumb is expected later this year, per Complex. Whether he answers is the next question. For the full release rundown, read our story on the three-album drop.
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
