“Talking shit has never been Drake’s forte,” says the Pitchfork review of this album, as if that wasn’t always one of the main tenets of his music. As if he had any other choice, after two years of lugging around the biggest L in modern pop culture. Iceman is not a rushed response, rather the result of much calculation on perceived disloyalties, but it’s not really a mature one either. Who wants maturity from Drake? No, the moment calls for elite level shit talking, nothing less.

Drake is a mainstream artist who can shake the table, from viral fan responses to tedious podcasters to the stupid White House social media account. His music must speak to multiple audiences at once. Interestingly, Iceman speaks only to other rappers, or ex-friends, to address these disloyalties he’s endured. And that’s the tilt, this puzzle of buried disses that reveal wit, and pettiness, and immaturity, directed by a musical compass that picks up on trends and finds pop hooks at every turn.

For Kendrick Lamar, this album offers zero conciliation. Why would it? I’ve never in all my years heard a diss song as vicious as “meet the grahams,” or as worldwide popular as “Not Like Us.” That wasn’t a battle rap loss, but a humiliation ritual. All the worse to be followed by a lawsuit that gave the appearance of Drake trying to sue rather than rap his way out. Follow this with a holding pattern R&B album, and a bizarre series of video drops suffused with byzantine imagery. Why is Drake driving a delivery truck? Mere symbolism would never have worked for this album, so it’s a good thing he steered away from it.

Besides his musical instincts, Drake’s saving grace is his adherence to battle rap culture. Toronto’s King Of The Dot along with Smack’s URL have long been the top showcases for the beating heart of rap lyricism. Watch a battle rap and you’ll see fifteen minutes of psychoanalysis, into which might be introduced anything from tax records to estranged children, while the opponent just waits his turn. Underneath the performative antics is a style of writing that layers puns on top of puns, that cannot ever rest on an easy punchline lest it be spoiled by the crowd. This is what has informed Drake’s better moments on Iceman.

I’d agree in theory that hearing Drake whine about injustices against him for a whole album doesn’t seem like compelling content. But it’s constructed with such petty intricacy that one has to admire it. Multiple things are happening in lines like “You put that jacket on anybody, you’re funeral bound/ But like the goal post, I’m out here just moving around” – you don’t get called what Kendrick called Drake at the Super Bowl stage and come back intact, unless the “goal post” was shaky to begin with. Later in the song there’s a veiled reference to Dr Dre, who physically assaulted rap video host Dee Barnes in the early ’90s, and appeared alongside Kendrick at the Pop Out show. This is tricky stuff, treading into a thicket where no one wins – hypocrites calling out hypocrisies, so what? Better is the indignation, that Kendrick’s biggest pop moment was based on the worst insinuation one can make toward another man: “The fact you had to bring those talks to get some decent plays…”

The signature sound is as ever icy samples and beat switches, complimented by regional nods. Generously or maybe too ambitiously, Drake has categorized this three album drop by style, with the other two for R&B and club hits. Still as a rapper Drake finds pockets and attaches to rhythms, as opposed to say Eminem’s buzzsaw delivery, or even Jay-Z’s, who at his best just dominated tricky beats. Call it a mix of ego and musical wit, but Drake first and foremost sets out to make listenable, commercially viable music. Who could argue that “Make Them Pay” and “Janice STFU” aren’t just that? One leans on one’s strengths, which to be fair to that Pitchfork comment, are really for Drake more about the music than the shit talking. To do both is really the goal here, since who cares about a diss that’s just fodder for the Joe Budden podcast? No, the diss has to worm its way into Tik Tok algorithms, to become irritatingly undeniable to its target. “Not Like Us” in that sense was a page from the Drake playbook, one of its many humiliations.

One could still criticize this album for an overreliance on gangster posturing, which has a whiff of the bullied kid cozying up to the tough crew. And though this is nothing new, it’s at least a choice that breathes some life into his music, which might otherwise just circle around itself with decadence. So critics will grumble about his “fake tough guy” act, even if that’s what rap music is and always has been. In a weird way the old design has been reversed, with rappers like Drake having to ratchet up their gangster the deeper they get into the industry. Sometimes Iceman is too consumed with trolling – what else are “Burning Bridges” and “2 Hard 4 The Radio” but in-jokes disguised as songs? Whether they work or not, as songs, they play into the notion that Drake is an insecure guy who engineered his own comeuppance, petty move by petty move.

The Michael Jackson cover iconography is definitely a choice, given its associated allegations. MJ punchlines were traded back and forth during the beef, so this might be another volley. It’s a reminder at least that this isn’t a URL battle rapper, but a global pop star who’s suffered a most humiliating round and is now having his say. “He doesn’t seem to grasp the rules of engagement,” says the Pitchfork review. Really? We’ll see, when this album draws its responses, which given its targets and the insecurities he keeps front and center, might result in another L. That he doesn’t even consider moving on, maybe saying the whole battle was beneath him, is admirable. I recall, as anyone who’s seen that old Beef DVD, KRS-One self-satisfied as ever congratulating MC Shan for responding to a diss because he understood that was hip hop, even back then as the rules were still being written. The rules still apply. This album, comprised almost wholly of disses, some no doubt still indecipherable except to their targets, is the very definition of engagement, like it or not.