Cardi B’s Long-Awaited Next Album Is A Make-Or-Break Moment

Rap fans have waited for five years for a follow-up to Cardi B’s debut album, Invasion Of Privacy , but the going hasn’t been easy. We’ve seen a string of false launches, pump fakes, and outright flip-flopping from Cardi herself about the album’s status. It’s understandable; there’s a lot riding on this release, both for Cardi and the rap game at large. On the bright side, it certainly seems like the album is finally dropping after Cardi acknowledged, “Sometimes I get a little aggressive because y’all know I don’t like to be told what to do,” but promised “ it’s coming THIS YEAR .”

Artists from every genre and generation have had to contend with the so-called “sophomore slump” — the perceived disappointment of an artist’s second album failing to live up to the commercial and critical heights of its predecessor. When an artist’s first album has been as successful as Cardi’s, the heights are dizzying, but the fall could potentially be fatal for that artist’s career. Invasion Of Privacy set about as a high a bar to clear as it gets, becoming the first album from a female rapper in 20 years to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spawning not just one, but two No. 1 singles: “Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It.” It’s become one of the most commercially successful rap albums in the last five years.

It also wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Cardi B shifted the axis of the entirety of hip-hop when she dropped her debut in 2019. The album turned Cardi into the genre’s new center of gravity, and it upended the gender dynamic , inspiring a wave of young women to jump into the rap business as labels once again opened up their coffers to new rappers of all stripes, from glamorous to ghetto fabulous to tomboyish. Cardi proved that female rappers could actually make money — or rather, disproved the notion that they weren’t worth the investment. Prior to Invasion , you could count the number of charting female rappers for the past decade on one hand. Since, we’ve had Coi Leray, Latto, Megan Thee Stallion, Saweetie, and more.

So, to recap: In order for Cardi’s second album to be considered a “success,” it would not only have to pull down a truly ridiculous number of album-equivalent units — the kind of numbers that are practically impossible to achieve in today’s increasingly fractured social climate — but it would also have to justify a five-year wait. At the same time, critics like Joe Budden have not only been scrutinizing Cardi’s release process, but declaring doom for the entire “girl rap” movement — recent hits from the likes of Ice Spice, GloRilla, and Sexyy Red notwithstanding. Basically, Cardi’s next album “failing” could potentially bring down the entire industry’s confidence in the concept of a female rapper. Just look at superhero movies, where the failure of Halle Berry’s 2004 Catwoman effectively tanked the stocks of other superheroines until Wonder Woman came out 13 years later.

Cardi seems more than aware of this legacy. She’s dropped smash singles since — “ WAP ” was inescapable in 2020 and 2021, while her features on songs like “ Tomorrow 2 ” and “ Put It on da Floor Again ” solidified breakouts for GloRilla and Latto, respectively — but songs like “ Up ,” “ Bongos ,” and “ Enough (Miami) ” never gained the traction to become the sort of culture-dominating juggernauts that lead to long-tail chart-toppers and Grammy Award shoo-ins. The pressure would be enough to get to anyone, especially someone like Cardi, who has shown exactly how sensitive she is over the years and frequently talks about how important it is for her to support her family with her success.

The thing about a sophomore slump, though, is that they aren’t always as dire as we make them out to be. Sure, it seems like a flop could be the end of Cardi’s career — but she’s already had a longer career than many supposed “one-hit wonders.” Her reticence to try and fail is understandable, though. She has a lot riding on this one; not only is her reputation precarious in a time when a near-constant flow of new music could wash her existing accomplishments away for fans with attention spans shortened by Spotify and other streaming options, but social media gives her biggest haters a direct line to tell her how much they think she sucks. As tough as she has proven to be, nobody really wants stans yelling at them all day about how much of a failure they are — which many of them already do.

But no matter what happens when she finally decides to drop, you just can’t count her all the way out. Even if she “falls off,” so to speak, she has the ultimate secret weapon — her household name. She’s reached the point where seemingly the whole world knows her name, and will always be intrigued to see what she’s going to do next. So, even if this second album misses the mark, her next “WAP” or “Tomorrow 2” could still be right around the corner.