Four years ago, drag performer Scarlet Envy was asked a very simple question ahead of her appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 6: Did she think that she would be considered the “villain” of the season?
“Is it me? Am I the drama? I don’t think I’m the drama … maybe I am,” she answered, clutching her proverbial pearls as a coy smirk crossed her face. “Am I the villain? I don’t think I’m the villain.”
Whether or not the queen was or was not “the drama” proved to be beside the point. In the weeks after the video dropped, Envy’s voice could be heard echoing across TikTok in thousands of videos, as fans, brands and celebrities — including everyone from Bridgerton‘s Nicola Coughlan to Lady Gaga herself — used the audio to ask themselves her introspective question. “It’s been a lesson to me on how you never know what the universe is going to throw at you,” Envy tells Billboard with a chuckle.
But even a mega-viral meme couldn’t have prepared Envy for what her off-hand comment would go on to inspire. Last week, after seven years of teasing fans about her follow-up to Invasion of Privacy, rap superstar Cardi B unveiled her sophomore album would finally be dropping on Sep. 19. And the title of the new project, Am I The Drama?, came directly from Envy’s open-ended question.
Envy explains to Billboard that Cardi’s team reached out to her “a week or two” before the album announcement dropped, priming her for an announcement that had something to do with her iconic moment. “I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on,” she says. But when the announcement finally did come, the star stopped what she was doing on New York’s Fire Island and felt her jaw drop.
“At first I thought, ‘Maybe it will be some small thing about drama or something,’ but when I saw the album cover, it was just word for word, Am I the Drama?” she says. “That was crazy. Even now, thinking about it, I’m not sure that’s sunk in yet.”
But the collaboration didn’t end there — along with giving Envy a tease of the album title, Cardi’s team also asked if she would be available to join the rapper on stage for her headlining set at LadyLand, the annual queer music festival held in Brooklyn by storied nightlife purveyor Ladyfag. “I go to Ladyland every year if I can, so I was planning to be there anyway,” she says with a chuckle.
Thus, at around 1:30 in the morning on the festival’s first night, Envy emerged to a peal of cheers at Under the K Bridge, where she introduced the rap sensation. “My name is Scarlet Envy, I’m the drama,” the drag star told the crowd . “I’m blessed to introduce this performer to you. She’s an icon, she a legend and she’s a hometown hero, b—h. Give it up for the one, the only, the drama, Cardi motherf–king B!”
Envy says she got to meet Cardi backstage, and thank her for using her meme as the album title. “She had Kulture [her daughter] with her, which was so sweet,” Envy says, still beaming. “But to be on stage while she performed was pretty sickening, too. To see her point of view and her perspective on on the crowd was amazing.”
It’s the kind of collaboration that gives performers like Envy some validation, especially in the political climate that we’re living under. Over the course of the last few years, right-wing lawmakers have gone out of their way to attempt to restrict drag performers’ rights to perform in public. While most of those efforts from politicians have been blocked by federal courts, many drag artists say that their ability to perform in public without fear of reprisal has been significantly hampered by the ongoing “culture war” around drag.
So, to have one of the most popular hip-hop artists in the world not only referencing drag culture, but collaborating with drag performers for her forthcoming album is a huge deal, Envy says. “It’s bridging a bigger gap in some way than when bubblegum pop girls reference drag queens,” she explains. “We are across genres. And I think it’s important, especially in the times we’re living in right now, to remember the power of the queer people behind drag. This didn’t become viral sensation because I had a wig on. It’s because of who I am and how I said this. So whether you have on eyelashes or not, queer people are powerful, and that’s not to be taken lightly.”
Envy also can’t help but grin as she thinks about all of the marvelous spectacle that could come out of a phrase she uttered years ago. “When artists like Cardi reference this, it also just gives power to being the drama,” she says. “It gives you the power to say, ‘I am the f–king drama, I’m gonna be who I am, and I’m gonna live my life the way I want to live it. Deal with it.’”
When it comes to her future with the project, Envy says that while there might be future projects she and Cardi work together on, eager fans looking for tea on the album should not come flooding into her DMs. “I’m just in the dark as much as everyone else is, I haven’t been able to hear the album,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender to the stans.
But when it comes to the future of her career as a drag performer, and the future of her fellow drag performers for that matter, Envy keeps it short and simple: “We’re not f–king going anywhere.”
