Cardi B Gets the Best Revenge

Cardi B released an album promo clip last week that highlighted the precarious business of a second Cardi B album: She boards the subway in sweatpants, adopting the script of a down-on-her-luck mother of three selling CDs to get by like the enterprising teens and adults hawking wares to straphangers. It takes all the worst suggestions about the solvency of her career to the extreme. She’s a millionaire cosplaying struggle, though maybe she views it as a peek at a timeline in which her music doesn’t take off. The point that there’s actually a lot riding on this album’s being good is more gracefully underscored in Am I the Drama? itself. Am I the Drama? arrives seven years after her debut, Invasion of Privacy, to recount her journey out of a rocky marriage to Atlanta rapper Offset and into a new relationship with New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs. It’s a blast to hear from a narrator with an unfiltered perspective and endless supply of snaps who can document the stress, trauma, and obligations necessitating that rawness.