The rapper referenced Curry’s Davidson days in one of his 3 new Friday releases
Drake’s prolific Friday took an unexpected turn for Golden State Warriors fans. The 5-time Grammy Award winner dropped 3 albums simultaneously, and one of them contains a lyrical shoutout to Stephen Curry that has already started circulating across social media.
What Drake just released
The 3 projects, titled Iceman, Habibti and Maid of Honour, arrived today as a triple release that marks Drake’s first new music since For All the Dogs in 2023. The rollout comes as the Toronto-born artist works to reassert himself in a music landscape shaped significantly by his high-profile dispute with Kendrick Lamar, who won a Grammy and headlined the Super Bowl LIX halftime show. Drake has also had ongoing public disputes with Rick Ross, Future, Metro Boomin and The Weeknd in recent years.
The Steph Curry reference inside Iceman
In the track 2 Hard 4 the Radio, Drake pays tribute to Curry’s college years at Davidson College in North Carolina. The lyric captures the moment before Curry made Davidson nationally known, when no one could place the school on a map, and contrasts it with the present reality in which virtually everyone associates the blue No. 30 jersey with one of the greatest shooters the sport has ever produced. It is a complimentary reference, not a diss.
For Curry fans, the moment resonates because it accurately traces his rise. Davidson was a small Division I program with almost no national profile until Curry’s extraordinary 2008 NCAA Tournament run, when he nearly single-handedly carried the team to the Elite Eight and made the school’s name recognizable across the country overnight.
Drake’s history of referencing Curry
This is not the first time the rapper has woven Curry into a track. The more famous instance came in 2014 on 0 to 100/The Catch Up, when a line about Curry’s shooting ability became one of the most replicated references in basketball-adjacent hip-hop culture. Drake also referenced Golden State in Summer Sixteen, though that track arrived just before the Warriors’ 2016 NBA Finals loss to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
What else appears across the 3 new albums
LeBron James received a lyrical diss across the new releases, adding a notable dimension to their long and occasionally tense public relationship. Detroit Pistons center Jalen Duren and former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas were also referenced across the 3 projects.
Toronto connections were visible throughout the rollout. The Raptors promoted Iceman with 2 specially iced-out seats at an April 12 game, tying the franchise directly to the album’s pre-release campaign. Athletes including Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby and Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton were among those who reacted publicly, adding an NFL and NBA layer to what has already been a significant moment in hip-hop this week.