Drake is bored by traditional album rollouts.
Nearly two decades into his career, he’s done it all. Long, elaborate rollouts with multiple singles and videos. Magazine cover promo. Release-night sitdowns with Zane Lowe. Surprise drops. By now, it’s all starting to feel a little stale to him.
“I was asked by a creative partner what I love and hate about rolling out an album,” Drake tells Complex over email. “I expressed that I love the opportunity for a clean slate of thoughts and excitement and messaging when it comes to the music. What I hate is the redundancy of this formulaic approach that’s engrained in our brains from early label days. Single, video, single, video, album cover post, etc.”
So when it came time for the rollout of his ninth studio album Iceman, he wanted to try something new: a series of theatrical live streams on YouTube, where he could debut new singles and build up a storyline around the project before it drops. “I have been dying to act and have been dying for a challenge,” he says. “The game is extremely calm seas right now. Nobody is rocking any boat on the water and so once we discussed a live stream rollout, it just sounded like the perfect mix of risk and reward for me.”
In 2025, if you want to do something impactful on the internet, live streaming is a good place to start. Hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously tune in to the most popular Twitch streams for hours (or even days) at a time, and streamers have become the most powerful new influencers in youth culture—especially within hip-hop.
Drake embraces live streaming
It only made sense for Drake to get involved. Since the beginning of his career, he’s been attuned to each new evolution of the internet. (He turned the Instagram caption into an artform, figured out how to use memes in rollouts, and mastered the art of the midnight SoundCloud drop, to name just a few examples.) He was ahead of the curve when it came to live streaming, too. In 2018, he broke Twitch records by playing Fortnite with Ninja. In more recent years, he’s gone live with streamers like Adin Ross and xQc, while occasionally hosting gambling streams of his own.
It was a natural next step for Drake to incorporate live streaming into an album rollout, but the idea of sitting in a room and talking at a desktop computer didn’t feel right. That would be safe. Expected. Instead, he wanted to put his own twist on it and bring streaming into his world.
“I think I am always capable of recognizing when things are shifting and not being weirdly affected by it, not being jealous, not being thirsty, just finding how I can shine light or co-exist or make it a part of our ecosystem,” he says. “With this, I just would study IRL streams vs. the stagnant ‘bedroom cam’ streams, and I feel like IRL just had so much unpredictable energy and movement. And we just started asking crazy questions like: How high can the quality get? How many cameras can we get to go live at once? 12? 13? 14? Can we get a drone shot to go live? We just started getting unhinged with the requests because we wanted to push it as far as possible.”
The first episode
On July 4, 2025, he went live on YouTube, debuting Iceman Episode 1, a 58-minute broadcast that exists somewhere between a music video, a live stream, and live theater. It started slowly, with long static shots of an ice warehouse in Toronto, before Drake appeared and started measuring large blocks of ice.
Twenty minutes into the stream, the words “What Did I Miss?” took over the screen, quickly cutting to a shot of Drake surrounded by dozens of guns. For the next three minutes, he danced through the warehouse as a previously unheard song blasted in the background. Just like that, his new single debuted to the world.
But he was only getting started. After a brief intermission, the stream resumed, and this time, Drake was behind the wheel of a large ice truck. As he drove through downtown Toronto, he played snippets of unreleased songs from the truck’s stereo, and before long, we started to hear shrieks from fans in the distance. “Draaaaaaaake!! Iceman! Drake!!”
This is when everyone realized what they were actually watching. This wasn’t a pre-recorded music video that simply debuted live on YouTube. It was a genuine live stream, unfolding in real time as everyone watched from home. This included fans in Toronto, who were able to track the location of the truck and run up on Drake, yelling whatever they wanted. The “chat” had materialized in real life.
Drake was mostly showered with words of adoration from his hometown fans, but there was one attention-seeker who shouted “you’re a bitch” from the street. Drake responded with some banter, firing back, “So what then big dog? Don't look away now, pussy. Don't look away now. Don't get shy now. We'll fold that up right now."
He brings this moment up when I ask about the funniest thing that’s happened on stream so far, responding, “Probably when this random tall white guy said I was a 'bitch' when I was driving and then I just naturally turned up mid stream… I wouldn’t even say I broke character cause that’s some iceman shit—you can’t just page me while I am driving around spreading good vibrations.” He adds, with an LOL, “He started moving quick after that. No more talking.”
Audience participation is key to the success of these streams. In each of the three Iceman episodes so far, Drake has previewed snippets of unreleased songs, effectively giving him a chance to test out work-in-progress tracks and get feedback from fans in real time.
Asked if this was one of his main goals for the streams, Drake responds, “It wasn't something we spoke about, but it's inherently a byproduct of this idea. Being outside and getting a chance to interact with fans, and initiate audience participation as well as feedback has been amazing. We're likely to end every episode in a public location as a through line, and also to enhance the live element. Some people have picked up on this. It’s also incredible to see people theorizing and either picking up on things or creating their own narratives.”
He got what he wanted, because there’s been a lot of theorizing going on. Each Iceman episode dives deeper into a narrative that involves Drake (“The Iceman”) and a sinister character who looks a whole lot like Pinocchio, plus a revolving cast of guests, including Central Cee and Yeat. The storyline is cryptic, revealing itself over the course of each episode and provoking countless fan theories and breakdowns online.
“I watch murder docs a lot and as you get invested you start to try and solve things before you even know where it’s headed or what the answers are,” Drake says. “It’s like this sleuth energy—what did I learn, what did I miss? No pun intended,” he says, laughing. “But yeah, it’s crazy to see people make two, three-hour videos on their thoughts and building conspiracies. It’s interactive content and that adds such a desirable element, more so than a music video with cars and tings. Not that those aren’t lovely sometimes.”
The first episode was a success, immediately drawing millions of views, but the OVO camp reveals that there was a lot of uncertainty before the broadcast started. “Episode 1 was probably the most nerve-wracking of the three because we had never done it before,” says Matte Babel, chief brand officer of DreamCrew and a member of Drake’s management crew. “In hindsight, we were also a little naive about some of the complexities. There was no roadmap. We didn’t know if it would work technically, or even logistically. The goal was to introduce the Iceman and 'What Did I Miss' in a fresh and innovative way.”
They had to learn on the fly while making the first episode. “The process leading up to it was intense,” Babel says. “We lost signal multiple times during rehearsals, so going live was stressful. We were actually aiming to go live on a Thursday, but decided to push it one more day to make sure everything worked. That decision likely cost us a No. 1 debut—the song landed at No. 2—but it was the right call. The extra day gave us a level of confidence we needed to pull it off. Drake also wanted the Iceman character to feel as authentic as possible, so there were no police escorts, no staged security—just Drake driving live, which made the drive a little more nerve-racking and unforgettable.”
With so much uncertainty surrounding the first episode, it was important to be grounded by some familiarity, which they found in Drake’s hometown of Toronto. The stream was recorded inside of a warehouse owned by a real ice company called The Iceman—a fixture in the city since 1987, the year before Drake was born.
“The Iceman warehouse was perfect,” Babel says. “I mean, it's a historical staple in Toronto, and their trucks are all over the city. The family that owns it was amazing, and they made it really easy despite all the uncertainty. Sometimes the stars align.”
Drake stresses the importance of the Toronto familiarity, explaining, “The first stream was at home, so it was well resourced and despite the complexity of pulling off something live at that scale, it felt manageable. We knew the city and the setup, and that familiarity gave us the confidence to focus on execution. When I was in the car, I didn’t even know if we were still live or not. I was just riding it out until somebody was able to give me some sign that it was working. I love driving in Toronto so that was just a great feeling for me.”
Live streaming on the road
Three weeks later, Drake was on tour when it came time for Episode 2, so they took the show on the road in the UK. The 41-minute episode featured an appearance from Central Cee and the debut of their single “Which One,” which has a direct connection to Episode 1. (During the first stream, Drake freestyled over a beat while driving the truck through Toronto—the beginnings of a song that he later completed and released as “Which One.”)
“It was cool to see the idea come full circle—the first stream birthed the song that carried the second stream,” Babel tells Complex in October 2025, but he notes that the second episode wasn’t without its complications. “It came together under a tight timeline. We initially set up to shoot in Birmingham and had everything planned, but after a bunch of internal discussions, we decided against filming until 4:00 a.m. and moving Drake on a show day, which meant moving the shoot to Manchester. We had about three days to scout, secure locations, get tech sorted, build the crew and rehearse.”
Each episode was planned in advance, but there were a lot of last-minute surprises and improvisation that changed the way they shot it.
“The first time we walked the train station, security saw our team on CCTV and immediately started asking questions, so during the stream was the first time anyone had run it,” Babel says of the UK stream. “In addition, because we used a completely different team—new technical crew, new operators, DP, and equipment all hired locally in London—there was a big learning curve. It was stressful, but the team pulled it together.”
Drake remembers the freewheeling nature of the second and third streams, which were filmed in Manchester and Milan, explaining that they came with a new set of complications because he was on the road. “The time difference was probably the biggest one for me, starting the stream at like 2:00 a.m. sometimes,” he recalls. “We worked with some great crews, but it was straight run and gun, no permits, so we lost some cameras and had some longer pauses than expected. That’s the rush, though…. It can go flawlessly right or terribly wrong. I am not sure if people understand what it takes to pull that off with cinematic shots and dialogue and music premiering.”
Naturally, people have had a lot of opinions about the Iceman rollout so far. Many have praised it for its innovation. Others have expressed disappointment with the pace of the streams. As with anything new, most people (on both sides of the fence) don’t fully understand what goes into a production like this.
“I think the biggest misconception is how simple people think this is,” Drake says. “When you try to do something new or different, people can be overly critical before really understanding what it takes. The goal with this project was to be creative and innovative—to experiment in a way that might spark others to think differently about how music can be released or experienced.”
The technical operation
So, how much time, energy, and manpower does it take to pull off these streams? “It's a lot,” Babel says. “There’s just so many moving parts. But unlike a typical shoot, you don’t have the luxury of overthinking. You plan what you can, and let it happen. If we had the time, we would have likely spent about at least two weeks preparing but with the pace of the tour it's impossible. From scouting locations to going live, the most we had was eight days in Italy and that shoot was 20 cameras, over 100 crew, over 10 locations.”
Drake has shot dozens of music videos throughout his career, but it soon became clear to him and his whole team that live streaming requires a totally different approach.
“With a music video, every frame is controlled,” Babel says. “You check every line item, every light, every detail before the cameras roll. It’s not a forgiving process. But the beauty of live streaming is that there’s a certain level of forgiveness from the audience. People know anything can happen, and that vulnerability actually makes it more engaging. At the same time, it’s still Drake, so there’s still a certain level of pressure we feel. Losing picture or having shitty sound would be the worst. The technical side is the most important, so there is quite a bit of emphasis on redundancy of feeds, reliable signal paths, and strong communication between crews, so if something goes wrong, the audience never sees it.”
As rudimentary as it sounds, one basic element ended up informing a lot of the creative: signal strength. “The first question with any location is simply: can we get a signal here?” Babel says. “That immediately dictates what’s possible creatively, since some ideas get ruled out right away if the connection won’t hold. Then there’s the logistics of moving Drake between multiple locations—finding places close enough together, planning routes, and managing traffic, which is why most streams happen late at night.”
Painting a picture of the scale of the technical operation, he continues, “You’re running multiple live cameras, switching between feeds, maintaining redundancy, and ensuring consistent sound—which is especially complex when music is layered on top. By the final episode, we had picture-in-picture feeds, live drones, and more than a dozen simultaneous cameras feeding into one stream. Even simple factors like battery life become major concerns when cameras are running for hours outdoors.”
And just when they thought they had everything planned for, they realized that certain things were out of their control. “In Italy, it started raining mid-stream, and even a light drizzle can jeopardize the entire setup,” Babel says. “This is an ambitious undertaking that requires constant problem-solving in real time. But that’s also what makes it exciting. Each episode teaches us something new; and as it gets easier technically, the ambition grows—so the challenges never really stop.”Each episode got more ambitious, and they leaned into a run-and-gun energy over time. “The timelines were so tight we couldn’t secure permits in advance,” Babel reveals. “We lost a couple cameras mid-shoot because the police were like you can't shoot here. You rehearse what you can, but at a certain point you just have to go for it.”
Now that they’re three episodes in, Drake and his team agree that the challenges have been worth it in order to figure out “a new way to merge music, performance, and storytelling in real time,” as Babel puts it. “Hopefully, as people start to understand the scale of what’s happening, they’ll appreciate the intent behind it—that this is about pushing boundaries, not chasing perfection,” he says.
It all comes back to Drake’s desire to keep shaking shit up and trying new things this deep into his career. “A lot of artists, once they reach a certain level, lose that spirit of experimentation—the same creative instinct that got them there,” Babel says. “Drake is still willing to take chances, to try something untested, and to embrace the unpredictability that comes with doing so. We did it with Her Loss as well and it cost us a pretty penny, but it was worth it.”
And they’re not done yet. The Iceman episodes aren’t finished. The full story has yet to be told.
“The finale will be our best work,” Drake says.