The Humanity Beneath Drake's ICEMAN
I waited two months before writing about Iceman. What I found wasn't an unbothered assassin. It was something far more vulnerable.
It always starts with a gentle head nod.
The bass and melody find my spirit, and the nod becomes more violent, expanding into a full upper-body sway. My neck bobs and rolls.
A woman sitting in a car a few parking spaces away sneaks a look at me through the corner of her eye. She smirks, then dips her head down to conceal her face.
She’s convinced I’m gay. I’m okay with that.
By track three, my face has aged. My brow is furrowed, and my mouth is poked out like a bratty, unsatisfied adolescent. And by the end of “Whisper My Name,” I’m suddenly rooting for Drake.
A soft ad-lib repeating, “Counted me out,” somehow transforms the biggest rapper of this generation into an underdog.
By track fourteen, “Make Them Remember,” I’m completely invested. I’m barely blinking, my mind drifting through those cumulus clouds Drake raps about. I even find myself frustrated with my favorite athlete, LeBron James, for his infidelity to his friendship with Drake:
“I shouldn’t be shocked to see you in that arena, ’cause you always made your career off of switchin’ teams up.”
“Yeah, get that n**a, Drake!” my mind roars.
By now, the sun has set over the lake, and the weekend afternoon shades into dusk. I step out of my SUV to stretch my limbs and throw a few shadow punches in the air, in quiet solidarity with Drake.
It’s actually been two months since Iceman dropped. I’ve listened to it a handful of times, but this was the day I was adamant about sifting through all of it.
Not just the production or the lyrics.
But everything.
It all moved so fast.
The beef, the diss tracks, the commentary, the zealous fans who almost ruined a legendary moment in hip-hop, the Super Bowl, the lawsuit.
True to who I am, I was determined to slow the whole world down and process this at my own pace without outside interference or jaded internet noise.
