After teasing her sophomore album nearly every year since her groundbreaking 2018 debut, Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B finally announced that it will drop on Sept. 19. This week, she revealed the cover art for her next body of work, aptly titled Am I the Drama?, after serving as high-profile gossip fodder for just about as long as she’s been making hits (to be fair, she did get her mainstream start on VH1’s reality TV drama factory, Love & Hip-Hop). Surrounded by foreboding ravens on the ominous album artwork she shared, Cardi B is happy to play the villain this time around – she’s even selling merch that says so. (Avian fun fact: A rep for Cardi B confirms to Rolling Stone that those birds are in fact ravens, not crows, as has been erroneously reported.)
In anticipation of Am I the Drama?, we’re running down everything we know about this album and the long road that led to it. For her June 2024 Rolling Stone cover story, Cardi B let us watch her work on the long-anticipated album in studios across the country, including Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank, California, and New York’s iconic Jungle City Studios. She was anxious – and, in New York, feeling sick – but relentless about making the best music she could. “I take my music so fucking seriously that that’s why I don’t put it out,” she told us at the time. “Because if it’s not perfect to my ear, if every fucking word doesn’t sound like it’s pronounced right, if the beat is overpowering the words or the words is overpowering the beat, I don’t want to put it out.”
It seems that was true for her latest single, “Outside,” the first new song of Cardi’s set to be featured on Am I the Drama? per an incomplete tracklist on Apple Music. It’s both a celebration of her independence and a no-holds-barred diss where she says, “Next time you see your mama, tell her how she raised a bitch.” On Instagram Live, she admitted that she didn’t want to release the song after it leaked around the top of the month, but fans clamored for it and her label, Atlantic Records, implored her to put it out. She publicly apologized to Atlantic for being “very bratty, very mean, very nasty” about this – via a since-deleted post on X, she had even threatened to put the label on blast before the song came out.
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Here’s what else we know:
Why has this album taken so long?
Since the wait for this album has now stretched on for nearly seven years, let’s just focus on the last 12 months or so, shall we? Last March on Instagram, Cardi B promised that her sophomore album would be released sometime in 2024, but by mid-May, she backpedaled in a heated online exchange with her followers. “Anyway NO album this year I don’t care I’m relaxing,” she wrote on X. Soon after, she deleted the post and her rep confirmed to Rolling Stone that an album in 2024 was still the plan. Atlantic even reposted Cardi’s Rolling Stone cover on X, writing, “Cardi B’s upcoming album is one of the most anticipated this year. We can’t wait [to] put it out, even if we have to sneak into her studio and take it! 👀”
Meanwhile, Cardi did let us know she was dealing with real-life changes and challenges, though it’s not clear what impact those may have had on her shifting release date. Unbeknownst to the public, Cardi was pregnant with her third child with her husband Offset, a daughter named Blossom, whose birth she announced last September. That spring, her marriage was on the rocks, with Cardi telling us she wasn’t sure about the future. “I think it through,” she said. “We think it through, because we do love each other. It’s not even about love. We’re best friends. And it’s like, ‘OK. Well, there was a time that I didn’t have a best friend, or I didn’t have a support system.’ It’s not even about ‘How do you leave a partner?’ How do you stop talking to your best friend?” However, by the end of July, Cardi filed for divorce — which she had done before in 2020 — and the couple appear to still be deeply estranged amidst the proceedings.
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Working hard while pregnant or with a newborn on her hip isn’t new to Cardi, nor is pushing her career forward in the midst of romantic turmoil. If you remember, Cardi’s first daughter, Kulture, was born just months after the release of Invasion of Privacy. By May of this year, Cardi was claiming that her album would have been ready if not for delayed features from her collaborators. “I really need these fucking features,” Cardi said on Instagram Live. “I’m not really trying to press or go crazy on these artists because I love them down. But it’s like come on now, I need that. I need that right now. Y’all don’t want to miss this opportunity.”
So, who are the features?
Well, that, we don’t know for sure. She had previously teased that the album would have both new and old faces, and she told Rolling Stone the guests would run the gamut of both rappers and singers. One person she told us she’s been obsessed with lately is fellow Bronxite Cash Cobain, whose star as both a producer and a rapper has been rising in the horny, laid-back movement known as sexy drill. In March 2024, Cash played Cardi about 30 tracks he had produced, many of which she loved. “I was like, ‘Damn, now I got to make a lot of choices because I don’t want my whole album to sound like this,’” she said.
After Cardi announced Am I the Drama?, SZA took to her Instagram comments to say, “Lemme send this verse chile,” foreshadowing a feature on the album. Cardi has collaborated with SZA several times before, like on “I Do,” from Invasion of Privacy, Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me” remix, and Summer Walker’s extended version of “No Love.”
Since “WAP” is featured on the new album’s 23-song tracklist, Megan Thee Stallion is already a guaranteed feature, but the rest are toss-ups. Rap veteran Busta Rhymes did make a public plea for Cardi B to call on him to collaborate, so it’ll be interesting to see if that worked out for him here.
What will the songs be about?
Last year, Cardi told us that she was weighing how much of her personal life to share on the album. “I really want to talk about the life changes that I’ve been dealing with the past six, seven years,” she said. “But then it’s just like, I feel like people don’t deserve to know because people use my pain against me.” She did seem to channel some of that pain into “Outside,” sharing on Instagram that “I made this song a few months ago when I was very, very angry…I had to change some bars because I was angry, honey.”
In the middle of recording last year (and in between our two interviews), Cardi B began therapy to help her cope with the life stressors that were distracting her. “It was just too much going on,” Cardi said when I asked about her change of heart, as she had expressed skepticism about therapy prior. “And when there’s too much going on, it fucks up my work.” Her longtime recording engineer Evan LaRay Brunson told us making music involves a “roller coaster of emotions” for Cardi. “When we good, we knocking them out. Verse after verse, hook, ad-libs. I’m like, ‘You’re done quick. You sure?’ But when she’s going through it, it’s going to be a long day.”
At the time, she wanted the album to reflect every part of her. “I’m a different person every single day,” she said. “When I’m in a good mood and I’m with my friends, [I’m] like, ‘Damn, I want my shit to be played in this club.’ But then I might be mad with my man, so it’s like now I want to do this song. But then I want to do a pop record. I want to do my sing-y shit.”
What will the album sound like?
While anything is possible, especially with songs as established as “Up” and “WAP” on the album, Cardi did play us some of the music she was hoping to include — just the beats, though. There was a sensual Afro-Caribbean number. There was a track she called “Better Than You” which was reminiscent of UGK and OutKast’s “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You),” with a pitched-up vocal sample, rich, violin-like synths, and rolling Southern drums. Cardi noted that its sound — courtesy of the producer Vinylz, whom she’s known since her days as a dancer — was brand-new for her. “I feel like the beat is not a beat you could get rowdy on,” she said. “It’s a real calm beat. And I had two choices, I could do more of an inspirational type of record — ‘I used to grind all my life’ — but then I decided to be like, ‘No, I’m going to shit on you bitches.’ ”
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She played a beat for a song she called “Pick It Up,” ‘meant for pop radio, with high-femme twinkles and chimes and keys that were distorted like a fun-house mirror. Then she played a drill beat in the sexy style of Cash Cobain, but produced by her regular collaborator SwanQo. It was called “Don’t Do Too Much,” and was glittery and animated, with a playful whistle as its through line. Cardi said she gets some jokes off on that track. “If it was up to me,” she said, “my whole album would sound like drill.”
Will she tour?
According to her interviews last year, yes. She was adamant that touring is how she learned to leave an impact on her fans since her mixtape days. At the time, she said she wasn’t performing live as much, simply because she didn’t have new music. “If I was doing things for money,” she said, “I would put out music every month because nothing pays me more than shows. But I care about how my music sound. I care about my quality. I care about giving something special every single time.”
