How Do We Grade the Rollout for Cardi B’s ‘Am I the Drama’ After Seven Years of Waiting?

In 2018, Cardi B aced conscionable astir each facet of her archetypal vocation medium rollout. Invasion of Privacy was released to rave reviews, spawned different contiguous smash successful the J Balvin and Bad Bunny collab “I Like It,” debuted atop the Billboard 200 and yet won a Grammy for champion rap album. Her videos were iconic, arsenic were her interviews, and the heavy cuts connected the medium were conscionable arsenic rewarding arsenic the large hits, each of which acceptable unneurotic perfectly. It was a borderline-perfect medium epoch — 1 that, possibly unsurprisingly, took her 7 years to adjacent effort to travel up.

With this Rollout Report Card episode, big Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard staffers Kyle Denis and Emily Fuentes arsenic we look astatine everything surrounding Am I the Drama? — some successful the 7 years that separated it and Invasion, and present the 3 months since its existent announcement. We effort to people each aspects of the rollout, and whether oregon not the longest-anticipated medium successful caller popular oregon hip-hop representation (and Cardi’s tireless promotion of it) managed to unrecorded up to our expectations.

As we manus retired our missive grades for each the astir important factors successful Cardi’s Am I the Drama rollout — from the unrecorded performances and euphony videos to the caller songs and wide “albuminess” — , we reply each the astir pressing questions astir the Drama: Did Cardi request a bigger fund for immoderate of her euphony videos? Which of the album’s beforehand singles deserved a amended reception than they got? Why didn’t we get immoderate authoritative unrecorded performances connected this medium cycle? Should Kelly Rowland person her ain speech show? Is it perchance to person an album-y 23-track LP that ends with 2 half-decade-old singles? How bash we consciousness astir Lizzo doing 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” karaoke? And possibly astir importantly: After 7 years, does it consciousness similar Cardi B is officially, decently back?

Check it retired supra — on with a YouTube playlist of immoderate of the astir important moments from this fascinating medium campaign, each of which are discussed successful the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever ...