Cardi b Don’t understand her way into her long-awaited second era-she comes for hip hop’s crown with a swinging new single, “Imaginary Playerz.” Released August 15, the track Jay-ZS in 1997 splits from “Imaginary Players” to a Cardi size flex and sets the tone for its upcoming album Am I the drama?, Because of September 19.
Built on Jay-Z’s test and produced by DJ Swanqo, Sean Island and Octanethisthatgas, “Imaginary Playerz” is Cardi B on her sharpest: Punchline-driven, brash and fun in the way she can be. “My flop and your flop are not the same/ if you made my numbers, would you pop champagne/ If I made your numbers I would jump out a plane,” She screams, before stacking more bars that place her not only as a rapeseed reigning chart-crash, but as someone who knows she doesn’t even belong in the same league as her doubt.
Where Jay-Z’s original spit Wannabes, Cardi B uses the canvas to restore its dominance over a rap world still waiting for her follow-up to 2018 Invasion of integrity.
The Bronx star has said that she would not have released the track without Jay-Z’s blessing-a nick that emphasizes both her respect for hip-hop family and her own position within it. “If he didn’t approve it, I probably wouldn’t even feel a certain kind of way, because it’s like,” Ok, maybe I just had to get a little harder, “” She admitted at spaces. Instead, Hov’s approval stamp makes this a generating handoff moment: Cardi who puts her spin on a classic and proves that she can keep her own with the icons she grew up idolizing.
The accompanying video, co -directed by Cardi B and Patienty Foster, is pure spectacle. She stays over an airport asphalt like it is a couture track, slides into red ball clothes, boards private jet aircraft, feeds oceanside on lobster and cuts everything in Parisian couture. The visual is less about subtle story than about image – Cardi B pleases over abundance, transformation of luxury such as survival and success for a woman who once danced in clubs to pay her bills.
“Imaginary Playerz” is the second taste of Am I the drama?, After “outside” and it places the disc as both unapologetically hip-hop and the other of maximum pop culture acts. With a 23-track spread promised, Cardi B seems ready to do good in the five-year-old gap between album with something high, bold and impossible to ignore.
If this single is any indicator, Am I drama? Is not just Cardi’s comeback – that’s her explanation that she never really left.
Listen to “Imaginary Playerz” below:
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