Drake Disses LeBron James on New ‘Iceman’ Album

Drake didn’t just drop an album Friday. He dropped three — and one track in particular has the internet talking about basketball as much as rap.

The Toronto superstar released Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour overnight on May 15, with zero advance notice, marking his first solo studio albums since For All The Dogs in 2023. Iceman — the 18-track, bar-heavy centerpiece of the trio, featuring Future, 21 Savage, and Molly Santana — is where the real heat lives. And Track 14, “Make Them Remember,” went viral before the album even officially dropped, when a leaked version surfaced on social media and fans immediately caught the shots aimed at LeBron James.

“I shouldn’t even be shocked to see you in that arena,” Drake raps, “because you always made your career off of switching teams up.”

The line is a clear reference to James’ journey from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat, back to Cleveland, and eventually to the Los Angeles Lakers — but it also carries a second meaning. James was in that arena: he attended Kendrick Lamar’s “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends” concert at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on June 19, 2024, the concert that became a cultural flashpoint during Drake and Lamar’s nine-track public feud. James wasn’t just in the crowd — he was seen vibing to “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s most pointed diss at Drake. Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan eventually appeared on stage with Lamar that night too.

Drake follows it up with a line that doubles as a shot at both LeBron and Kendrick simultaneously: “Please stop asking what’s going on with 23 and me — he’s not, it’s in my DNA.”

The “23” references James’ jersey number, and “DNA” is a direct nod to Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 banger from his Grammy-winning album DAMN — which includes the line, “I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA.” Drake is essentially saying: don’t ask me about my loyalty to LeBron, and while we’re at it, here’s a Kendrick reference too.

How a Brotherhood Became a Beef

The Drake-LeBron friendship was once genuinely one of the more visible cross-industry bromances in pop culture. In 2018, Drake brought James on stage at a Los Angeles show while performing his verse on Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode.” And in 2023, after Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest, Drake walked both LeBron and Bronny out at his LA stop of the It’s All a Blur Tour. The moment was emotional and public.

“I don’t know if you saw who walked me to the stage tonight,” Drake told the crowd that night, “but the gentleman that walked me to the stage tonight is my brother. He goes by the name of LeBron James. And in 2009, when nobody believed in anything I had going on, that same guy showed up to a release party for a mixtape called ‘So Far, So Gone.’”

Drake even had LeBron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary high school jersey tattooed on his left arm. But in July 2025, he revealed he’d covered it — replacing it with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander‘s No. 2 and the word “Thunder” layered on top. That tattoo swap told the story before any lyrics did.

The “Make Them Remember” bars aren’t the first shots Drake has taken at James since the Lamar feud either. In January 2025, a track called “Fighting Irish Freestyle” surfaced — a reference to James’ high school — with the line, “The world fell in love with the gimmicks, even my brothers got tickets.” Then in February 2025, during a live performance in Perth, Drake changed a lyric in “Nonstop” from “How I go from six to 23 like I’m LeBron” to “How I go from six to 23 but not LeBron, man.” Each move was deliberate. Each one landed.

For his part, James addressed the state of their relationship in September on the podcast “360 With Speedy,” keeping it measured. “Always wish him the best obviously,” James said. “Different places right now, currently. He’s doing his thing, I’m doing mine, but it’s always love for sure.”

LeBron Isn’t the Only Name Drake Called Out

Iceman is a sprawling settling of scores. Kendrick Lamar is the through-line — Drake raps on the album opener “Make Them Cry,” “I’m in the cut just loading rebuttals” — and nearly every track has at least one sub aimed at Lamar or the West Coast broadly. On “Dust,” he raps, “What was the year you said you had slaps, cause I don’t remember it going like that, I don’t remember one word of your raps.” He also takes aim at Mustard: “Mustard heard about us, gotta catch up to the slaps / You ain’t had one since me and YG rapped.”

Rick Ross and DJ Khaled also get called out. On “Make Them Pay,” Drake raps, “Dawg, I was Adin Ross with streams before Adin Ross had ever streamed” — widely read as a reminder to Rick Ross of how much Drake contributed to his commercial run during the 2010s. Ross had joined the pile-on against Drake during the Lamar feud with his own diss track, “Champagne Moments.” For Khaled, Drake raps: “And Khaled, you know what I mean / The beef was fully live, you went halal and got on your deen” — a dig at Khaled for staying neutral as things escalated.

Not every NBA reference was a diss, though. Drake also shouted out Stephen Curry on “2 Hard 4 The Radio,” rapping, “Back when they was asking about where Davidson was at / now everybody got a blue 30 on they back.” A rare warm moment on an album that otherwise has a lot of scores to settle.

Drake also opened up on “Make Them Cry” about what the 2024 feud actually cost him personally: “What died back in 2024 was a big piece / So it’s like this s— is me, but it isn’t me / Y’all keep on asking what it did to me / That’s what it did to me.” He revealed his father is currently battling cancer, touched on his ongoing lawsuit against UMG, and reunited with Future, rapping on “Ran to Atlanta” that “me and Hendrix back by popular demand.”

There’s also been significant fan speculation about Drake’s label situation. Lines like “I’m better off independent, they should let him leave” and “Swear my label gotta free me, baby” have listeners wondering if this triple-drop is part of a larger strategy to fulfill — or escape — his deal with Republic Records, a division of UMG. All three projects are listed on streaming platforms as OVO “under exclusive license to Republic Records.”

As for LeBron — the Oklahoma City Thunder just swept his Lakers out of the playoffs. Drake, who replaced LeBron’s tattoo with the Thunder’s star player on his arm, surely noticed the timing. Sometimes the universe does the work for you.