Cardi B’s sophomore album, Am I the Drama?, arrives at a tumultuous time of the Grammy-winning rapper’s life fraught with marital issues, multiple industry beefs, including a well-storied feud with her colleague and hip-hop titan Nicki Minaj, and the need to protect her status as one of the game’s most bankable artists. Aptly named to mirror the flamboyant superstar’s larger-than-life exploits and the aftermath of her escapades, her second outing boasts the energetic texture of her septuple-selling debut Invasion of Privacy (2018), while tempering the levity with showings of matters from the heart.
Supported by a stellar line-up of features such as Kehlani, Summer Walker, Selena Gomez, Lizzo, and Tyla, among others, the New York City-born rapper takes great pains in presenting the events of the past seven years as a collage of wild-hearted rants, tear-jerking reflections of a wife and a mother, and boisterous chants of a woman who’s altogether in her element as a hot commodity in music and as a tongue-wagging sex symbol.
Cardi B | SUPPLIED
With a playback time of an hour and ten minutes, Am I the Drama? is a predominantly hip-hop album with an appreciable leaning towards club-friendly, trap-influenced production. Predicated on sonorous bass thumps, high-octane tempo, and electronic instrument selection, the consummate production runs the gamut of either hip-swaying or bubblegum music as heard on the whimsical, xylophonic “Pick It Up” or perhaps the fast-paced, carnival-inspired “Bodega Baddie” and ominous trap with a forbidding ambiance such as the album opener, “Dead”, which is an audio vignette fletched with bulletin-style tidbits in the beginning and malignant piano loops that sound like something straight out of a 90s murder mystery film. However, Cardi does balance things out with touches of R&B, infused into the album in its most minimalistic form with stripped down production.
Cardi’s idea of sequencing her records is well-documented, with her revealing her approach of prioritising getting everything off her chest first before moving on to giving the listener fun records on her famous Hot Ones interview several years ago. With Am I the Drama?, she practises what she preaches, with the thematic scheme of the project covering her status in the game relative to her peers and rivals (“Dead”, “Hello”, and “Magnet”), vulnerability that comes with falling in love (“Pick It Up”, “Safe”, “On My Back”), her tempestuous marriage to estranged husband Offset (“Man of Your Word”, “What’s Goin On”, “Shower Tears”), and being comfortable as her grandiose self (“Check Please”, “Better than You”). And every one of these themes is ordered in clusters, making the album a smooth listen that doesn’t go back-and-forth or move around aimlessly in tiring circles of pity parties and weaponised fits of frustration and fury.
Cardi B | SUPPLIED
For this one, the “Clout” hitmaker wears her heart on her sleeve and expresses everything she feels in the bluntest way imaginable, and in some instances, the shamelessness comes with the heavy price of names. An exquisite example of this is her diss track, “Pretty & Petty”, aimed at rapper BIA, which is a ruthless exhibition in which she tears through the success of her music, her looks, and her alleged fakeness. On the song, she shows no intention of hiding the hand she threw the stone with, and there is a directness to it that “Dead” lacks – though it flies close to Nicki Minaj lyrically – which enriches the song with a depth of venom that’s usually enough to give the assailant the round in a rap beef. She is also just as direct on “Man of Your Word”, addressing her husband she’s been separated from for years, bringing up the issues of infidelity on his side while also accusing herself of allowing her career to consume her to the point of not being able to cater him to the fullest.
Am I the Drama? is a thoughtful mix from a woman who is troubled but is doing her level best to turn manure into fertiliser, transforming her unpleasant circumstances into food to help her grow. In this album are impassioned feelings verbalised with eloquence, coupled with beats that fit the mercurial rapper’s persona. Everything about the album is large: the drama, the harangues, and the fun. It’s an opus from the heart, and such is evident in each minute.
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