It's been seven years and a whole lot of hits since Cardi B released her debut album Invasion Of Privacy, and album number two is finally coming out in about a month. Cardi's sophomore LP Am I The Drama? will feature her recent single "Outside," as well as the years-old hits "WAP" and "Up." Today, Cardi shares another new single, and this one is a full-blown homage to a Jay-Z deep cut from 1997.
On Cardi's new song "Imaginary Playerz," she and her collaborators -- producers DJ SwanQo, Sean Island and OctaneThisThatGas -- flip the beat and the flow from Jay-Z's In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 track "Imaginary Players." Cardi uses it to talk her shit, and she does it with a slightly different flair from what she usually does. Cardi is still unmistakably herself, but you can hear her adapt some of Jay's effortless imperiousness when she talks about how her unnamed rivals can't even understand her frame of reference. It's just a real New York rap song, and it warms my heart to know that this is what Cardi wants to make right now.
As Pitchfork points out, Cardi B says that she got approval from Jay-Z to release "Imaginary Playerz." Jay gets a writing credit on the track. The song's video, which Cardi co-directed with Patience Foster, feels a bit like a return to the absurd luxury of the high Roc-A-Fella era, with Cardi lounging on yachts and beaches in Mykonos before trying on impractical clothes in Paris. I like the bit where the tuxedoed waiters come up out of the water to serve her shellfish. Check it out below.
Am I The Drama? is out 9/19 on Atlantic.
