Drake unveiled his long-awaited album “Iceman” on Friday, and the opening track did not wait long to turn personal. On “Make Them Cry,” he says his father, Dennis Graham, has cancer, pulling a family battle into the center of his first solo studio album since his feud with Kendrick Lamar.
“My dad got cancer right now, we battling stages/Trust me when I say there’s plenty things I’d rather be facing,” Drake raps on the song. The line lands as the album’s first major moment and frames “Iceman” as something more exposed than a standard return, especially after the rapper spent last year on the joint R&B project “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” with Partnextdoor.
“Iceman” is Drake’s ninth solo studio album, and it arrived alongside surprise albums “Habibti” and “Maid Of Honour.” The record includes collaborations with Future and Molly Santana, while production comes from Noah “40” Shebib, Overkst and OK. That combination gives the project both the scale expected from Drake and the sense of a release designed to move quickly, with little warning beyond the music itself.
There is also a sharper personal backdrop under the album’s release. Drake’s parents divorced when he was young, and his relationship with his father has long been described as complicated and fraught, even as the two appeared in recent years to reach a public reconciliation. By putting Dennis Graham’s illness into the opening track, Drake makes that uneasy history part of the album’s first impression rather than something left for interviews or later songs.
The album also arrives at a point where Drake is still trying to reset his solo run after the clash with Kendrick Lamar. That makes “Iceman” more than another entry in a crowded catalog. It is a statement that the next chapter begins now, with family, history and unfinished business all pressed into the same release.
