Drake‘s Iceman is right around the corner, which means speculation about the highly anticipated album has reached a fever pitch. Charlamagne tha God added to that frenzy on The Breakfast Club on Monday, when he claimed Karol G makes an appearance on the album. This would mark her first-ever collaboration with the rapper.
Neither Drake nor Karol has not confirmed the rumors. Representatives for both Karol G and Drake did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. But given Drake’s history of collaborating with Latin music artists, a Karol G feature is not out of the realm of possibilities.
Over the course of his career, Drake has often embodied his Champagne Papi persona and dabbled with Latin music, working with some of the genre’s biggest stars. He’s hopped on tracks for Romeo Santos, Bad Bunny, and rising música mexicana artist Chino Pacas, and even tapped these artists for his own songs. Below, we look back at all of the times the rap superstar expanded the boundaries of his sound to include Latin music.
2014: “Odio,” Romeo Santos feat. Drake
On 2011 hit “The Motto,” Drake famously sang about how “Spanish girls love [him] like [he’s] Aventura.” Three years later, life imitated art when the rapper hopped on a song with Romeo Santos, lead singer of the New York bachata group he name-checked. The melancholic, bachata-flavored track is Drake’s first-ever attempt at singing in Spanish, and he gives it his best: “Celo sus besos / Sobre tu cuerpo / La envidia se apodera así de mí,” he sings, which translates to “I’m jealous of kisses / On your body / Envy takes hold of me.” It’s proof that even in another language, the moody rapper still can’t shake his loverlorn disposition.
2018: “Mía,” Bad Bunny feat. Drake
In 2018, Bad Bunny and Drake teamed up for a collaboration that shifted the conversation between hip-hop and Latin trap. The song perfectly fused signature elements from both genres, creating a club hit that peaked at Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and gave Bad Bunny, a then-rising star, his first top ten on the chart as a lead artist. “Mía,” which was featured on the the Puerto Rican musician’s debut LP X 100pre, also marked the first time Drake rapped entirely in Spanish for a song, which Bad Bunny insisted on. “It was a great moment for both [of us],” Benito told Billboard Canada recently. “He really believed in Latin music at that time. It was the very beginning.”
2023: “Gently,” Drake feat. Bad Bunny
Five years later, Drake tapped Bad Bunny for a track on his For All the Dogs LP. This time the Canadian rapper went into Spanish-accented Drizzy mode but only for a couple of lines before continuing to spit over a classic dembow beat. True to his roots, Bad Bunny delivered his verses in Spanish with a uniquely Boricua flow. “Gently” didn’t come with a music video filmed in Miami like “Mía” did, but it still charted at Number 12 on the Hot 100.
July 2024: “Healing,” and “Sideways,” Gordo, Drake
Drake and Gordo have been longtime collaborators; Gordo is known for a bunch of tracks on Drake’s 2022 album Honestly, Nevermind. So it made sense that in 2024, Drake hopped on artist/DJ/producer Gordo’s third LP Diamantes, working as an unofficial consultant on the entire album. “He rides for me that heavy and he’s letting the world know that,” Gordo told Rolling Stone at the time. On both “Healing” and “Sideways,” Drake sings about love lost, his R&B-inflected vocals contrasting Gordo’s electronic beats for a hypnotic effect.
October 2024: “Modo Capone,” Chino Pacas, Fuerza Regida, Drake
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Drake further explored the world of Latin music when he worked with música mexicana artist Chino Pacas on a corrido. The Toronto rapper sings “Cubanas me gusta portarlas, dinero es poder” over a flurry of guitarrón, accordion, and saxophone notes.
“Modo Capone” came together after Drake saw Pacas perform at the Houston Rodeo. Later, he hit up the música mexicana artist over Instagram DM, asking him to write a song for him. Pacas sent him “3 Letras (OVO),” a corrido dedicated to the rapper’s success. It was impressive enough that Drake hopped on a song with Pacas, gifting the young artist with a major collaboration for his debut LP. “You can tell his professionalism and his years in the industry,” Pacas told Rolling Stone at the time. “It’s something else. We have a lot of chemistry and that’s why we ended up working together.”
2025: “Meet Your Padre,” Drake, PartyNextDoor feat. Chino Pacas
The chemistry between Pacas and Drake remained strong a few months later when Pacas jumped on Drake and PartyNextDoor’s joint album $ome $exy $ongs 4 U for “Meet Your Padre.” The track is heavy on the Toronto influence, filtering any Mexican notes through an icy OVO sheen as Pacas delivers lines in Spanish with his signature throaty timbre. Meanwhile, Drake sticks to English and briefly confuses his Latin references, rapping about a Brazilian city, the Dominican genre “bachata,” and Mexican girls in the same verse.
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.