Rick Ross Shrugs Off Drake Album Hype, Says Nobody Fears ‘Iceman’ Release

Rick Ross is not sounding rattled by Drake’s next move. A few days after what looked like an olive branch toward the Toronto rapper, the Miami MC turned up on Hot 97 and made it plain that, feud or not, nobody is exactly losing sleep over Drake’s Iceman album arriving this week.

Rozay sat down with Nessa on Tuesday, May 12, while promoting his new book Renaissance of a Boss. Asked about the state of his relationship with Drake, he avoided the kind of full-throttle bitterness fans might expect and instead framed it as a disciplinary issue.

“People would love for me to say, ‘I hate this n-a forever.’ Nah, homie, it ain’t that. When somebody step out of line and you gotta chastise them or give them a spanking, that’s what you do,” he said. “But is it one of those things where there’s a conspiracy? Hell no. Don’t nobody fear Drake’s album release. Nobody.”

That line landed as the sharpest swing in an interview that kept circling the same question: can this relationship be fixed? Ross said any real path to reconciliation would likely have to run through French Montana, who he described as the only person speaking positively on Drake’s behalf to him.

“[Drake] speaks to French. French says a lot of positive things that he should maybe send French a pecan pie for … because nobody would speak on his behalf to me,” Ross added. “But French do and that’s what I made it clear if anything was to ever come from that it would come through French because it wouldn’t directly come to Rozay.”

The comments came only days after Ross seemed to soften his stance while speaking about Drake on Apple Music. There, after his Verzuz battle with French Montana, he shifted into a more conciliatory register and told Drake directly:

“Drake, if you listening to this homie, listen to me, my n-a, shine. I don’t want to see you lose. No real n-a want to see you lose. That ain’t what about. This culture, this game, this rap this ain’t what it’s about.”

The tension between the two has been out in the open since 2024, when Drake took shots at Ross on “Push Up” and Ross answered with “Champagne Moments.” The details behind the fallout are still murky, which only makes the back-and-forth feel a little more typical of rap beef in the streaming era: public jabs, half-clarifications, then another interview to keep it all moving.

For fans, though, the more relevant part may be the music history between them. Ross and Drake have long worked well together, with records like “Money in the Grave,” “Lemon Pepper Freestyle,” “Gold Roses,” “Aston Martin Music” and “Stay Schemin’” sitting comfortably among their biggest collaborations.

Drake is set to return on Friday, May 15, with Iceman, his first solo album since 2023’s For All the Dogs. Whether he addresses Ross on it is now part of the guessing game, even if Ross is already making one thing clear: he does not see the album release as something to fear.