Cardi B settles scores on Am I The Drama?, her long-awaited second album

Steven McIntoshEntertainment reporterGetty ImagesUS rapper Cardi B has returned together with her first album in seven years, a blistering assortment of songs that reference her current divorce and ongoing beef with one other feminine rapper.Am I The Drama? – a title impressed by a RuPaul’s Drag Race meme – was launched on Friday, and is her first full-length album since her 2018 debut Invasion of Privateness.Rolling Stone described the rapper’s sophomore report as a “fittingly grand return for a queen who by no means left the throne”.Followers welcomed the return of rap’s “queen of chaos” as they dissected the album’s bracingly sincere lyrics.The US star references her 2024 divorce from rapper Offset, previously of hip-hop group Migos, rapping: “Final time you [messed] up, I stated I used to be executed / Tousled once more, I took you again, I used to be dumb / Ought to’ve fell again from you, as a substitute, I gave you a son.”She additionally raps about his obvious infidelity, commenting that she “may’ve cheated too”.However she additionally displays on her personal function of their break-up, telling him: “As a spouse I ought to have realised while you have been damage / However as a substitute I put my music first.”Elsewhere, Cardi B escalates her ongoing beef with fellow rapper Bia, saying her rival’s “melatonin circulate [is] placing us to mattress”.She additionally challenges listeners to “title 5 Bia songs, gun pointing to your head”, including that Bia’s report label ought to be glad about the publicity from the fallout, rapping: “I am doing you a favour, Epic.”In a 4.5-star reivew, Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield famous: “She’s bought an extended record of scores to settle, enemies to crush, crowns to say. “She’s out to remind everybody she’s looser, wilder, much less predictable, simply plain funnier than anybody else within the recreation.”Getty ImagesCardi B filed for divorce from Offset (pictured in 2023) final yearCardi B shot to fame in 2015 after showing on the VH1 actuality present Love & Hip Hop: New York.Having already gained prominence on social media, she went on to launch mixtapes and visitor on different rappers’ hits earlier than releasing her personal debut album.Robin Murray of Conflict awarded her second album 7/10, writing: “Turning the main target again to music, Am I The Drama? makes an attempt to pin down the chaos of her life, and – in essentially the most half – succeeds.”It is a report that appears like an exhalation, a long-awaited memoir that refuses to blot out the reality. [It] does not flinch from the express, and embraces discomfort.”Cardi B, whose actual title is Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, has remained within the headlines within the years since her first album.Earlier this month, she was cleared of assault by a Los Angeles jury after a safety guard sued her for $24m (£18m).Emani Ellis had alleged that the US rapper lower her cheek with a 3in (7.5cm) fingernail and spat on her exterior an obstetrician’s workplace in 2018.Cardi B has had three infants for the reason that launch of her debut album and has simply introduced she is pregnant together with her fourth.