I love Cardi. I think she’s hilarious, authentic, a hustler, an extremely hard-worker, and a real music lover. Because I’m a big fan of her and her catalogue of mixtapes and singles, I probably wasn’t going to be medium on Am I The Drama? I was either going to love it or be extremely disappointed.
I’m not disappointed.
But I’m annoyed that she didn’t put out another tight set like Invasion of Privacy and instead went the way of other big-name rappers recently: shorter songs, and a whole lot of them, to run up those streaming numbers. The filler weighs down the project and takes what could have been another classic album and makes it feel Just OK because the highs are dragged down by the repetitive fluff.
I went back and listened to Invasion of Privacy just to be sure, and I’m confident in saying that if she had edited her second album down to 12 or 13 tracks like her debut, she would have made the same impact if not harder. This is how I ranked the songs from Cardi’s debut and these are the songs I would have kept from Am I The Drama? if it had been up to me.
Those are my personal faves, but the album doesn’t have any bad songs. The rest of the album is all 7s to me, but I just don’t need that many songs that are so thematically similar. “Trophies” is great. I don’t need “Trophies” and “Err Time” and “Check Please” on the same album with “Magnet.” On that same coin, musically, there are too many repeats of “Pick It Up.” It’s a cute R&B moment! I can bop to it! But I don’t need that feat. Selena Gomez plus another one feat. Summer Walker plus another one feat. Kehlani plus another one feat. Tyla.
And I don’t need those two old hits on the album either because “Killin You Hoes” feels like a great period on the end of the project. If she really wanted to put “WAP” and “Up” out there for the Platinum certifications, I would have told her to collect all of her Top 20 hits since Invasion of Privacy and release them together as a deluxe, double version of the album. You could also put an EP out there as a separate purchase and call it More Drama because she damn near has enough hit singles for a whole album.
(*Yes, I had to include “Like What” in my dream project because I love that song so much!)
I think making the album tighter & shorter, and keeping those two blatant certification-grabs off the album at the end, would have cut some of the criticism off, but the critiques that I see don’t really seem rooted in any real listening of the music.
Someone said the collaboration with Lizzo was awkward and Lizzo always seems like she’s screaming on the track. Did they listen to any of the words? One of the lyrics literally says, “And I screamed from the top of my lungs the fuck is goin on!” Have they listened to the original where Linda Perry is also putting all her angst onto wax?
Other critiques says she only raps about her pussy or she only raps about calling her haters broke. Personally, those are my Favorite Cardis, but this is clearly a divorce album in line with Kacey Musgraves Star-Crossed and Death Cab for Cutie Kintsugi and Toni Braxton & Babyface Love, Marriage, and Divorce. A good quarter of the album is aimed directly at Offset while another half is Cardi finding herself amidst the dissolution of her marriage.
They say she’s not vulnerable enough. How much more vulnerable than “Man of Your Word” does she need to be?
They say she doesn’t switch up her flow. Did you listen to “Imaginary Playerz” or by flow do you mean she needs to do 13 different voices on album?
To be fair, there’s no “Bodak Yellow” on Am I The Drama? but there’s no “Bodak Yellow” on anyone else’s album either because that’s a once in a career type of crossover musical event. What Cardi does have is enough venom for her ex, enough comebacks for her opps, and enough braggadocio for the stripper inside of all of us and that’s exactly what I wanted from the People’s Princess. Further, Cardi has improved on the mic over the years to the point where my early criticisms of her (mush-mouthed, poorly articulated, wet bars on the track) are a thing of the past. When she’s taking belt to ass swiping a piece of Nicki, Ice Spice, JT, and BIA in the process, I heard (and laughed at) every word.
Cardi had a tall hill to climb. Nobody but Sade takes 7 years between albums. Nobody but Beyonce manages to stay so ever-present in the pop culture consciousness with no new music out. Nobody but (insert random male rapper) manages to have four kids in the first decade of their career. And no reality TV star at all has managed to make it even halfway up the hill Cardi is trying to scale for the second time.
Am I the Drama? is a triumph for even existing at all, but Cardi managed to take everything that made Invasion of Privacy great and tweak it for the woman she’s grown into over the years. And if she added a few too many tracks for more space to talk her shit? I can forgive her. For the amount of headlines she generates, she can get a little extra space to blow off some steam.
Score: 4.5 / 5
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