Album Review: Am I The Drama? by Cardi B

The American rapper finally returns with a wide-ranging but spotty LP Deep in the doldrums of covid, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released one of the best pop songs of the decade in WAP. Frank, audacious and hilarious lyrics are delivered rapid-fire over minimal, bassy production, with the raw energy of a freestyle and the slow-building structure of a stadium anthem. Five long years later WAP serves as the last track on Cardi B's second album, and across the record her delivery and attitude is as distinctive as ever.

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"I Like It", "Bartier Cardi", and her once-in-a-lifetime hit "Bodak Yellow" unleashed her brash, hustler personality onto a command of the form - who can disagree with "Cardi put the pussy on Offset?" She was up front about stripping and less so about unsavory details like drugging and robbing men, but hers was, ultimately, a tale of success. "I ain't telling y'all to do it, I'm just telling my story," she raps on "Get Up 10", a song that - I say with sincerity - captures an admirable tenacity and perseverance. It makes sense why she was everywhere in 2017-2018, from her 3 No.

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It’s one thing to be naturally as charismatic and magnetic as Cardi B — her testimony during last month’s assault lawsuit was as compulsively entertaining as any binge watch — yet it’s another to marry it to skill. It’s been eight years since the rapper left smoking stiletto prints in her wake with her titanic breakthrough single “Bodak Yellow,” and seven since she released her debut album “Invasion of Privacy. ” That record was a mission statement, a flag-planting arrival that showed the breadth of her talent was more than just the sum of her reality TV and viral parts.

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On her second studio album, Am I the Drama?, Cardi B's brash personality, humor, and charisma again imbue her genre-hopping with life and direction. From trap to boom-bap to Latin pop-rap, the rapper moves from song to song with confidence and ease. Given all the swerving, as well as the long wait since 2018's Invasion of Privacy, a 23-track album clocking in at 71 minutes feels justified.

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It's been a long time coming. Since the explosive 2018 release of Cardi B's debut 'Invasion of Privacy ' she's become one of the planet's most-dissected celebrities, gaining all manner of headlines in the process. In the time it's taken her to release sophomore album 'Am I The Drama?' she's welcomed motherhood and weathered divorce, appearing onstage and in the court room .

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