Drake did not just diss his many rap foes on his new album ICEMAN. He also seemed to take aim at the music industry as a whole, specifically his parent label UMG. Drizzy's shade towards its CEO Lucian Grainge and other business dealings amped up the conversation around his three new albums, as various reports and fan theories suggest they fulfilled his record label contract with them.
However, while many fans and media outlets discussed these theories and initial reports, others started to ask questions to clarify this a little more. This includes Joe Coscarelli of The New York Times, who recently spoke about the 6ix God's trilogy with Jon Caramanica on their Popcast show.
More specifically, Coscarelli said he "made some calls over the weekend" and "talked to people on both sides." As it turns out, no one can really know this for sure yet until either the Toronto superstar, his team, or someone from UMG confirms it, as a lot is still apparently in motion.
"The answers that I'm getting are, 'It's complicated,'" he expressed. "The lawsuit is ongoing. Nothing definitive. It's not 'Drake is 100% free'... I think it is a fluid situation. These contracts probably have a lot of clauses about what happens even after a deal is fulfilled. Because they are in active litigation [and] there's an appeal that could happen, that's probably going to have some say in how this all goes."
Drake's UMG Situation
From there, Joe and Jon discussed whether this triple threat feels more like a business move than a creative move. They believe they're not mutually exclusive as strategic considerations, with Caramanica arguing only The Boy could creatively execute this specific business idea.
"I imagine putting three albums out gets him to the table of a renegotiation faster," he theorized. "It also solves the strategic problem we were talking about. 'I've been away for two years. How do I assert myself? How do I come back in the loudest possible way?' Then, it's creativity. 'I'm not going to give you three albums of the same thing. I actually have the capacity of giving three separate kinds of albums.' So I think it's in that order. But it only exists this way because he can do all of them at once."
ZADCOZZY shared this clip on Twitter, and the user paired it with another theory concerning Drake's contract situation with UMG. Ray Daniels claimed on the SOS podcast that he's already "independent" under UMG, as he is allegedly paying for his albums. We'll see if we get clarification on any of this in the near future.
