Canada’s CN Tower appeared frozen with an icy-blue projection late Thursday night, ahead of the sudden midnight releases.
WASHINGTON — Toronto’s CN Tower, Canada’s tallest structure, appeared frozen late Thursday night, but it wasn’t because of some sort of rare May freeze.
Instead, the icy-blue projection was a celebration of Toronto’s biggest star, rapper Drake, who, with little warning, dropped three separate albums at midnight Eastern Time on Friday. The light display was followed by a fireworks show over Canada’s largest city.
All told, “ICEMAN,” “MAID OF HONOUR” and “HABIBTI” feature a combined 43 songs adding up to about 2-and-a-half hours of new music from the 39-year-old rapper. While “ICEMAN” had been publicly in the works, fans got about an hour’s notice for the other two, with Drake posting each album’s cover art onto separate Instagram posts, followed by “… OUT AT MIDNIGHT.”
In one comment, the Canadian social media account for the energy drink Red Bull crossed out the word “sleep” and replaced it with “listen to 3 Drake albums.”
The Instagram post about “ICEMAN,” whose name appeared to be the inspiration for the projection on the CN Tower, amassed nearly 3 million reactions on the social media platform by 3 a.m. The cover art features allusions to two pop stars, a Michael Jackson-esque white bedazzled glove and a Taylor Swift “Eras Tour”-esque friendship bracelet. Swift notably released “Folklore” and “Evermore” simultaneously in 2020.
While the bulk of the new albums feature solo work, there are also reunion tracks off “ICEMAN” with past collaborators 21 Savage and Future. Sexyy Red, the 28-year-old rapper from Missouri, was featured on both “MAID OF HONOUR” and “HABIBTI.”
The three releases were the first studio albums from Drake since 2023’s “For All The Dogs,” which also featured 21 Savage and Sexyy Red. Drake and 21 Savage also collaborated on “Her Loss,” a joint release from 2022.
Born Aubrey Drake Graham in Toronto, Drake has featured the Canadian skyline and Torontonian iconography on many of his tracks and in his music videos. On 2016’s “Views,” the rapper can be seen photoshopped sitting atop the 1,800-foot CN Tower.