Breaking Down Drake's 3 New Albums (LIVE! Reactions)

Popcast

The New York Times

Music, Music Commentary, Music Interviews

3.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this special live episode, Joe and Jon react to Drake's new albums – "Iceman," "Habibti" and "Maid of Honour." They unpack the rapper’s decision to release 43 tracks at once, the bars aimed at Kendrick Lamar and other adversaries and the strongest moments of sonic experimentation across the three projects.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the New York Times Popcast.
0:02.9	Your swollen knuckles of weekly culture chat.
0:05.2	I'm John Caramonica and I'm the critic.
0:07.4	I'm Joe Koskerelli.
0:08.7	I am the reporter.
0:10.2	It's Iceman weekend, which to say it's bigger than Iceman.
0:15.0	It's bigger than just a weekend.
0:16.4	We're here for the next 90 minutes talking about everything, Drake, that's happened in the last 48 hours.
0:22.8	We're talking Iceman.
0:24.1	We're talking Made of Honor.
0:25.1	We're talking Habibti.
0:26.2	We're talking conspiracy theories about multinational corporations, talking legal battles.
0:32.0	We're talking what happens when your friends stop liking you?
0:36.9	Fake friends. They were never your friends to start with uh we have a lot of touch points to go off of uh jo at the top should we very simply say one two three we got three albums that we're reckoning with should we just get it out of the way i don't want to bury the lead i'm also personal taste... We're going to go live on Instagram as well. Yeah, we're going... We're going live on every platform. Check us out where you find us. Yes. Phenomenal. So we're going to start ranking Drake albums. Do you want to go first? All-time Drake albums? No. Drake albums have been released in the last 48 hours.
1:12.4	The new Drake albums.
1:13.3	Yes.
1:13.4	Okay.
1:15.7	The anticipation, the topical bars, it's Iceman.
1:22.4	Iceman is the project still.
1:25.0	I think Iceman is, it's the lead, it's the album. The two surprises that came
1:31.8	alongside it are a lot of things, artistic flex, a business flex, a genre flex. But Iceman to me is
1:41.6	the main event here and that came through in the music.
	...

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