Cardi maintains a respectful distance from the prevailing trends. Instead, she plays with bursts of experimentation, adopting new flows without sacrificing legibility. .... That work [editing the track list down], when offloaded to the listener under the guise of generosity, lands instead as risk aversion.
Am I The Drama? is the fittingly grand return for a queen who never left the throne.
The result is a bloated, soulless shell that never finds its own voice.
While Am I The Drama? isn’t perfect, it certainly has enough bangers to keep her relevant for a few more years.
Am I the Drama? is charming both because of and in spite of its rowdy pugnacity, packaged and polished with highly professional pop-rap craft.
It’s a record that at first curiously struggles to find its footing, before an assured mid-section guides Cardi B to the next level of her career.
So while this sophomore set is not as immediate as her star-making Invasion of Privacy, it delivers on high expectations with fine production, bars for days, and Cardi's persona itself.
Whereas her blockbuster debut Invasion of Privacy used every minute of its runtime, AM I THE DRAMA? wavers and meanders around tracks that are fine at best and miserable at worst.
At 70 minutes, Am I the Drama? cleaves to an era when rappers felt impelled to pack CDs to the limit of their capacity. .... Still, at least streaming means you can fillet out the bits you don’t like or don’t need to hear again. You’ll still be left with an album’s worth of imperiously raw and powerful material.
What Cardi delivers here is not a flawless masterpiece, nor is it meant to be. Instead, it is messy, ambitious, sprawling, an album that mirrors the contradictions of its maker.
Like many long-delayed albums (and most albums with a producer list even longer than its track list), “Am I the Drama?” has a spaghetti-thrown-at-the-wall quality, and not all of it sticks.
Am I the Drama? is no Invasion of Privacy, and the passage of time is mostly at fault. While lightning may not have struck twice, Cardi B is closer to fighting form than she’s been in years, false starts included.
Cardi maintains a respectful distance from the prevailing trends. Instead, she plays with bursts of experimentation, adopting new flows without sacrificing legibility. .... That work [editing the track list down], when offloaded to the listener under the guise of generosity, lands instead as risk aversion.
Am I The Drama? is the fittingly grand return for a queen who never left the throne.
The result is a bloated, soulless shell that never finds its own voice.
While Am I The Drama? isn’t perfect, it certainly has enough bangers to keep her relevant for a few more years.
Am I the Drama? is charming both because of and in spite of its rowdy pugnacity, packaged and polished with highly professional pop-rap craft.
It’s a record that at first curiously struggles to find its footing, before an assured mid-section guides Cardi B to the next level of her career.
So while this sophomore set is not as immediate as her star-making Invasion of Privacy, it delivers on high expectations with fine production, bars for days, and Cardi's persona itself.
Whereas her blockbuster debut Invasion of Privacy used every minute of its runtime, AM I THE DRAMA? wavers and meanders around tracks that are fine at best and miserable at worst.
At 70 minutes, Am I the Drama? cleaves to an era when rappers felt impelled to pack CDs to the limit of their capacity. .... Still, at least streaming means you can fillet out the bits you don’t like or don’t need to hear again. You’ll still be left with an album’s worth of imperiously raw and powerful material.
What Cardi delivers here is not a flawless masterpiece, nor is it meant to be. Instead, it is messy, ambitious, sprawling, an album that mirrors the contradictions of its maker.
Like many long-delayed albums (and most albums with a producer list even longer than its track list), “Am I the Drama?” has a spaghetti-thrown-at-the-wall quality, and not all of it sticks.
Am I the Drama? is no Invasion of Privacy, and the passage of time is mostly at fault. While lightning may not have struck twice, Cardi B is closer to fighting form than she’s been in years, false starts included.
当 Cardi B 宣布将在 9 月 19 日发行她的第二张个人专辑《AM I THE DRAMA?... 查看更多