Late Thursday night, the CN Tower appeared to be frozen, casting an icy blue projection ahead of a surprise midnight showing.
WASHINGTON — Canada’s tallest building, Toronto’s CN Tower, appeared to be frozen late Thursday night, but it wasn’t because of a rare May freeze.
Instead, the icy blue projection celebrates Toronto’s biggest star, rapper Drake, who dropped three separate albums without warning at midnight ET on Friday. The light show was followed by a fireworks display over Canada’s largest city.
All told, “ICEMAN,” “MAID OF HONOUR” and “HABIBTI” contain a total of 43 songs, totaling about two and a half hours of new music from the 39-year-old rapper. While “ICEMAN” was already publicly revealed, fans were given about an hour’s notice of the other two albums, with Drake posting each album’s cover art to separate Instagram posts, followed by “… OUT AT MIDNIGHT.”
In one comment, the social media account of Canadian energy drink Red Bull crossed out the word “sleep” and replaced it with “Listen to 3 Drake albums.”
As of 3 a.m., an Instagram post about “ICEMAN,” whose name appears to have been the inspiration for the CN Tower projection, had nearly 3 million comments on the social media platform. The cover art hints at the two pop stars, Michael Jackson-esque white glitzy gloves and Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour”-esque friendship bracelets. It’s worth noting that Swift released “Folklore” and “Evermore” simultaneously in 2020.
While most of the new album is solo work, there are also some ICEMAN tracks with past collaborators 21 Savage and Future. Sexyy Red, a 28-year-old rapper from Missouri, has appeared in “MAID OF HONOUR” and “HABIBTI”.
The trio of albums is Drake’s first studio album since 2023’s “For All The Dogs,” which also featured “21 Savage” and “Sexyy Red.” Drake and 21 Savage also collaborated on “Her Loss,” which will be released jointly in 2022.
Drake, who was born Aubrey Drake Graham in Toronto, features the Canadian skyline and iconography of Toronto in many of his tracks and music videos. In 2016’s “Views,” a Photoshopped version of the rapper can be seen sitting atop the 1,800-foot-tall CN Tower.
