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.
Cardi hasn’t exactly been out of the music game since then, releasing maintenance singles like “Enough (Miami)” and “WAP” featuring Megan Thee Stallion. But a sophomore album after this long can make or break a career, especially when it’s cloaked in this much hype. Cardi is more than up for the task with “Am I the Drama?,” an unflinching, raw and refined record that never loses its footing despite its robust runtime (23 tracks over 71 minutes). It’s an album that demands rapt attention as Cardi parses over the very public trials and tribulations she’s faced since her debut, inevitably emerging on the other side as one of the great rap records of 2025.
To start: Is Cardi the drama, or does the drama find her? It’s hard to tell who’s passing the buck on “Am I the Drama?,” yet she wastes no time confronting it. On album opener “Dead” featuring Summer Walker, she makes it clear that she’s not here to play: “I’m collecting body bags like they purses / I don’t even rap no more, I drive hearses.” She’s quick to check her rap foes and has both fanged and vulnerable moments while grappling with her split from Offset. There’s a lot of ground to cover since “Privacy,” and Cardi spends the album pointedly treading through it.
While “Privacy” was an album that somewhat kowtowed to pop crossover, “Am I the Drama?” skirts the big hooks and flashy beats and lands on something darker yet far from opaque. There’s immediacy and a momentum that propels it forward, rich with wordplay so clever and comedic that it could easily set the stage for a future in stand-up. She tries on different sounds and styles — “Bodega Baddie” is a merengue thumper, while “What’s Going On” featuring Lizzo bravely interpolates 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” to workable results — yet she holds it all together with a commanding flow and unmatched charisma.
That charm can curdle if you’ve fallen out of Cardi’s good graces, and she appears to be taking swipes at JT and Ice Spice on “Magnet.” No one feels the sting more than Bia, a rapper with whom she’s sparred in the past. On “Pretty & Petty,” she leaves no stone unturned: “Name five Bia songs, gun pointin’ to your head,” she sneers, taking a pause. “Bow, I’m dead.” The one-liners keep on rolling. “Why you all in people’s face with that shitty mouth? / Diarrhea Bia, breath so stank you can smell her ‘fore you see her.”
Sure, rap beef makes for good entertainment, but Cardi is far from one-note (as we’ve repeatedly learned), and the album’s tracks concerning her divorce from Offset give it much-needed heft. “I’m sick of fighting, sick of crying, shit, it’s 4 a.m. / If you don’t answer this time, I’ll never call again,” she tells him on “Shower Tears.” On “Magnet,” she shouts out the “hoes that wear the pants like Kamala” who “got my baby daddy acting like my baby mama.” It isn’t all scorched earth, though: “Man of Your Word” is the album’s emotional centerpiece, lending Offset a bit of grace despite his infidelity. “Don’t know if I’m mad at me or you,” she states, reckoning over what went wrong and maturely wishing him the best.
Cardi tacks on two previously released singles, “Up” and “WAP,” likely as a streaming ploy to juice first-week numbers though they slot comfortably with the rest of the record. “Am I the Drama?” is stacked with features from a laundry list of artists, including Cash Cobain, Selena Gomez, Lourdiz and Janet Jackson on “Principal” (a misdirect, as it merely samples “The Pleasure Principle”). Yet Cardi is the central force of “Am I the Drama?,” an album that shrugs off the threat of a sophomore slump with fire and brimstone and, above all, heart.
Cardi is the rare pop culture presence whose braggadocio across “Am I the Drama?” feels justified — a reminder that even when the cards are stacked against her, she’ll always find a way to reclaim her throne.
