Getting Back: Cardi B’s Am I the Drama?
by Alex Lawler
Illustration by Amit
Cardi B’s sophomore album, Am I the Drama?, has been seven long years in the making, and it shows. If you don’t know her, you’ve at least heard her music; one of the few reality stars to break out of the genre, Cardi B made a groundbreaking debut in 2017 with her inaugural album, Invasion of Privacy. Just two years later she became the first female solo artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap album, and has gone on to release a number of successful singles and EPs since 2018. And after all this time, her fans’ patience has paid off with the release of her sensational sophomore LP.
I listened to this album for the first time in the parking lot of a Raising Canes. I had been waiting for this album as long as any other loyal follower, and my expectations were high. I had just started getting “into music” when Invasion of Privacy and, more importantly, the single “Bodak Yellow” broke the internet, so to speak. Like almost everyone else who listened to Am I the Drama? I was inclined to compare it to Invasion of Privacy and its cult classic status. Subsequently, my first listen was, unfortunately, disappointing. It wasn’t that the album itself was bad. I thought the first song in the album, “Dead (ft. Summer Walker)”, was good, but it was uncharacteristically serious for the sarcastic rapper, who made a name for herself with her refreshing self-awareness and sense of humor. Meanwhile, this album was sorely lacking the camp disses and iconic one-liners that were once hallmarks of Cardi B’s sound. I was expecting to be rocked by the same aggressive, dedicated sound that preceded it, but so far I’ve only been “turnt up at the party” by “Hello”, the song my friends and I have had stuck in our heads for a week. Perhaps this projection was an error on my part, but it is hard to shake the expectations built out of years of hearing songs like “WAP (Wet Ass Pussy)” and “Up” destroy both the charts and my car speakers.
The seven years between the success of her first album and the release of her second were full of drama, making her album an aptly-titled, 71 minute behemoth of an LP. Between the birth of her three children, a supporting role in Hustlers (2019), a highly publicized on-and-off relationship with her ex-husband, Offset, two more multi-platinum singles (“WAP” and “Up”), and a court case in which fans and jury members alike were once again charmed by her infectious sense of humor, Cardi B has had a ridiculous couple of years. Both admirers and critics were dying to know what aspects of her personal life Am I the Drama? would dredge up. And she delivered; one thing that no critic can ever say about Cardi B is that she did not, in fact, bring the drama. Her album aired her grievances not only with her ex, but with a host of rappers, influencers, and other public figures who Cardi has tangled with since the release of her first LP. The thirteenth track on the album, “Pretty and Petty”, is entirely dedicated to rapper BIA, as she criticizes her career and music. The fourth song, “Magnet”, disses Cardi’s former friend and fellow rapper JT, along with her boyfriend Lil Uzi Vert. This album is a “get back” album in more ways than one. Not only is she “getting back” at those who wronged her, but it also seems as though this album is her attempt to return to normalcy after a tumultuous few years. She seems to want to “get back” to her craft, and her eagerness to create music and find her place in the new rap landscape that she helped create–one in which there is room for more than one popular female rapper at a time–led to a dynamic, heavily layered album featuring different facets of Cardi B’s artistry.
What I think I initially reacted to when I first heard Am I the Drama? was an album that was so variable in its sound that it felt scattered. In the words of American music critic Anthony Fantano , the album seemed to have “a lot of effort without a lot of focus.” Given the extended period of time between the releases of her LPs, it seems like the music world has changed so much that the album doesn’t know how to “get back” to the sound that made Cardi famous in the first place.
