Cardi B - Am I The Drama?
Seven years in the making, Am I the Drama? finally lands in our hands after Cardi B spent the past decade thinking, hesitating, stewing, giving birth, going to court, getting caught up in scandals, rewriting, canceling, and postponing. What we get is a 23-track, 70-minute project that feels like a scrapbook of nearly everything she recorded over that period.
And let’s start with the obvious: when you pack an album with 23 tracks and a long guest list clearly aimed at streaming, the first casualty is cohesion. Invasion of Privacy worked so well because it was lean—13 tracks, tightly calculated by label execs and top producers, delivering a rock-solid debut that still holds up. This time, Cardi seems less interested in presenting a statement album and more in throwing everything against the wall. The result is Am I the Drama?, a record that plays like a TJ Maxx store: chaotic, cluttered, and random, where you have to dig through racks to find the gems—and when you finally do, they’re either too small or too big for your size.
To Cardi’s credit, her personality remains her greatest asset. She doesn’t have to pretend to be a “bad bitch”—she is one, and that authenticity bleeds into everything she does. Even at her worst, she entertains. That charisma alone makes parts of this album enjoyable, even when the music stumbles.
The problem is that those stumbles are hard to ignore. Now stay with me and listen: we take "Dead", "Hello", "Magnet", "Bodega Baddie", "Safe", "Outside", "Pretty & Petty", "On My Back", "Principal", "Trophies" and "Nice Guy" and that's a solid and exciting 11-track LP. Add "Up" and "WAP" as bonus tracks, and you’d have a worthy follow-up to Invasion of Privacy. Instead, the album is weighed down by another dozen songs that don’t belong here. "What’s Goin On" with Lizzo feels like a chore to finish, while "Check Please", "Killin Your Hoes", "Man of Your Word", and the Selena Gomez collab “Pick It Up” sound lazy, undercooked, and in some moments—borderline artificial.
That imbalance leaves the album messy. The good moments don’t fully outweigh the bad, and as the tracklist drags on, it becomes harder to justify the whole thing. The first seven or eight tracks promise energy and fun, but soon after, it becomes full of fillers, unfinished songs, half-baked ideas, and unnecessary moments.
Ultimately, Am I the Drama? reflects Cardi B herself: unpredictable, chaotic, entertaining, but not always reliable. Am I the drama for saying Cardi should have let the label execs handle the tracklist? Maybe—but I’m probably right.
6.4/10
