Seven years is a very long time. For Cardi B, these years have crept by even slower. Her debut, the critically acclaimed and insanely profitable Invasion of Privateness, was launched on April sixth, 2018. (That’s roughly a century in the past in rap years.) In a social media put up on June twenty third, Cardi lastly introduced her long-awaited follow-up, Am I the Drama?, set to drop on September nineteenth.
Hip-hop is a persnickety beast. It each is determined by and impacts popular culture; due to this cyclical reliance, and the brief consideration span of audiences, the style strikes quick AF. Cardi B has achieved her damndest to not be left behind, however is it sufficient?
Whereas she hasn’t been a key participant within the album dialog, Cardi has remained current and visual by means of her dominant options run over the previous few years. Particularly, her visitor verses on GloRilla’s confidence-boosting 2022 single “Tomorrow 2” and Latto’s 2023 summer time anthem “Put It on da Flooring Once more” have saved the rapper related, and generated pleasure for Cardi’s new materials. With Am I the Drama?, Cardi will likely be re-entering a well-recognized house — however it has reworked since these fiery options, and much more since her arrival.
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Let’s begin from the highest down. The world is in a vastly completely different place than it was in 2018. Unbeknownst to us then, we had been two brief years away from a pandemic. COVID modified the best way we interacted, supported, and engaged with each other. The truth is, Cardi B took benefit of that second when she launched “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion in the summertime of 2020. Debuted on YouTube in a reside video premiere with Megan, the tune was an immediate hit and topped the Billboard Scorching 100 chart instantly upon its launch. It was proper round then that we had been anticipating an album from Cardi; in hindsight, it’s comprehensible why she didn’t need to launch her sophomore effort right into a vacuum.
We’ve collectively reworked, and that, in flip, has altered the mechanics of the music trade. The rise of COVID additionally introduced concerning the rise of TikTok, the platform we like to hate. With TikTok got here an overemphasis on viral snippets, which labored to the benefit of artists who at the moment are in a position to make membership appearances off of 30-second clips. (What a wealthy life, certainly.) Labels at the moment are outright pushing artists to be content material creators, and in some instances, coercing them to create music that’s social-first. Earlier than, throughout, and after the discharge of her new album, Cardi B must deal with this shift.
She already appears to be adapting. The lead single, “Exterior,” is Cardi’s first solo launch since final 12 months’s “Sufficient (Miami).” Whereas the latter tune had a good run, peaking at No. 9 on the charts, the brand new monitor sounds way more energized and dynamic. The manufacturing, dealt with by Charlie Warmth, HeyMicki, and DJ SwanQo, is pushed by a pattern of The Showboys’ standard reduce “Drag Rap,” higher often known as the “Triggaman” sound that’s utilized in numerous songs out of New Orleans. Over the booming, elastic manufacturing, Cardi pops her shit on the highest degree, declaring that she’s able to be again exterior after a tumultuous marriage to her ex, Atlanta rapper Offset: “I been cuffed up too lengthy, let me remind n****s,” she spits with venom.
“Exterior” leaked weeks earlier than Cardi formally dropped the only, and her followers ate it up. In accordance with the rapper, she didn’t “care a lot for the tune,” and he or she had no intention of releasing it. “I don’t know if I actually wanna put that tune out, to be trustworthy with you,” she mentioned on Instagram Dwell on June ninth. “And it’s not as a result of I’m doubting myself and this, this, and that. I’m actually, actually grateful for all of the love. It was by no means the plan. I don’t assume I wanna put out a single to be trustworthy with you. I simply wanna put out my album all on the identical time.”