Asking Cardi B to thoughts her tongue is like asking an oceanic creature to desert its undersea residence. It’s not fucking taking place. The Bronx MC lives and breathes controversy, even when she’s not deliberately courting it. Since her 2017 breakthrough single, “Bodak Yellow,” Cardi B has steadily revealed herself to be the high-profile superstar of our time, a larger-than-life character who’s simply as fast to decorate down the common Barb as she is to eviscerate her personal friends.
Between a messy divorce, infants (infants, and extra infants), rap beefs, web vitriol, and courtroom instances, Cardi B has remained within the public eye. That is all even if she hadn’t launched an album since 2018’s Grammy-winning Invasion of Privateness. Her new album, Am I the Drama?, confirms that sure, Cardi B is the rationale for the entire chaotic conditions she continuously finds herself in — however is she at fault, or is she simply shining too vivid? Cardi’s newest undertaking is an providing of proof that she’s a innocent sufferer of hating-ass bitches and ain’t-shit n****s. It’s as much as us to imagine her.
In a latest Spotify dialog with Future’s Baby royalty Kelly Rowland, Cardi make clear the inspiration behind Am I the Drama? “Typically, followers or individuals will likely be like, ‘Oh, don’t give them power,’” Cardi mentioned. “‘They don’t deserve your power,’ or like, ‘They don’t deserve your clout or your consideration.’ And it’s like, nah, you recognize what? Fuck it. I’mma give it to you. It’s like, fuck it, I’mma give it to you. As a result of typically individuals be like, ‘Simply ignore, ignore, ignore. Take the excessive street.’ And it’s like, ‘Fuck the excessive street.’” Should you’ve if been paying even a smidgen of consideration, you recognize that Cardi B’s aversion to going excessive when others go low is unsurprising. This album is her alternative to get her lick again on everybody who has been praying on her downfall, be it for years or minutes.
The opening observe, “Lifeless,” options R&B diva Summer time Walker singing extra passionately than we’ve heard her shortly, as Cardi raps about her foremost aim of killing the competitors: “They are saying, ‘Cardi, you tweaking,’ nah, I don’t be tweaking sufficient/ Bitches be doing shit and I be letting it slide and I don’t be bringing it up/ Bitches be out right here telling lies about me and y’all simply be consuming it up/ However after I drag her to hell, ‘Cardi, you evil as fuck!’” On the BossMan Dlow-inspired “Magnet,” Cardi menacingly sharpens a lyrical machete in a pointed assault towards JT of the previous Miami rap group Metropolis Women. For practically a minute straight, Cardi shatters the rapper’s picture, with no single care or fuck to offer.
“Fairly & Petty” is sudden sonically, because it bangs like a music that West Coast newcomer AZ Chike would place on his personal debut album. However thematically, it’s proper on cue, as Cardi makes use of your entire music to re-escalate her beef with Boston rapper BIA, an artist she’s been focusing on since her function on final 12 months’s “Wanna Be” remix with GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion. “Title 5 BIA songs, gun pointing to your head/ Bow, I’m useless,” she raps on the high of the observe, earlier than launching into an outright assault based mostly on accomplishments. “You wanna beef with me, are you positive?/ Do she even obtained a BET Award?” (Whereas a BET Award is a excessive honor within the Black neighborhood, it’s typically seen as low on the totem pole of awards throughout the trade.)
