Drake fans, including DJ Akademiks, are eager for him to drop off ICEMAN. In fact, just a few days ago, the independent journalist was teasing the album on his Twitter. "Damn .. yall n****s really miss Drake... I'll let him kno... All the haters done change their tune .. maybe yall were right all he needed to do was to fall back n let yall realize ain't sh*t popping out here without hm and now yall all remember the glory days huh..."
Ak signed off with, "[ice emoji] so soon."
However, with the music industry facing a lot of issues such as botting and the recent news about YouTube and Billboard's standstill, he thinks Drake should wait a bit before releasing it.
"The industry is beefing with itself," DJ Akademiks said in an early-morning livestream per joebuddenclips. Before going into how stagnant things are overall, he said he believes his favorite artist should wait at least until March.
Ak continued, "Their beefing with bots... the labels are putting more pressure on everybody because streaming has become stagnant. What happens when streaming becomes stagnant? No one's spending money [on new artists], we went through a battle that sucked the life out of the industry anyway..."
"We are trying to figure out how do we grow because right now, we are in a place of non-growth... It's drama along the board," he concluded.
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Did Drake Announce An Iceman Release Date?
To quickly inform you on the YouTube and Billboard dilemma, the former has decided to end their partnership starting on January 16, 2026. It will remove all of the streaming data from Billboard's charts.
In part, global head of music, Lyor Cohen said, "Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn't reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription."
With that said, it will be interesting to see if Drake reacts to everything that's going on. He hasn't announced an official release date yet nor an official cover art. The closest we have gotten to receiving such information was through the likes of Johnny Manziel who once claimed we were getting ICEMAN in the fall.
