The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Oct. 4, we look at the long-awaited sophomore album from rap superstar Cardi B, and what its chances are of debuting atop the chart.
Cardi B, Am I the Drama? (Atlantic Group): It’s been a long, long wait for Cardi B fans, but the rap great has finally returned with her second album. Am I the Drama? dropped last Friday (Sept. 19), nearly seven-and-a-half years after Cardi first bowed with Invasion of Privacy back in April 2018. That set debuted atop the Billboard 200, spawned a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit in the Bad Bunny and J Balvin team-up “I Like It” (joining her first leader, 2017’s “Bodak Yellow [Money Moves],” also included on the album), drew rave reviews and even won a Grammy for best rap album — understandably making it a challenge for Cardi to follow up in the years since.
But now, the sophomore LP is out, and also receiving mostly strong reviews. The 23-songs-on-DSPs set swarmed the Apple Music real-time charts upon its Friday release, occupying the great majority of the top 10 even though, as of posting, HUNTR/X’s “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters has since taken back over from Cardi’s new Kehlani collab “Safe” (which also received its own music video) atop the listing. Response to the album has been much more muted on Spotify, where “Safe” is the only track from it still residing in the top 100 of the Daily Top Songs USA chart.
Beyond its overall streaming returns, which should still be fairly robust for its full first week, Drama is also expected to sell well. Those numbers will be helped greatly by a wide variety of available CD and vinyl variants, many with different varieties of album cover, including the already-infamous “courtroom edition” taken from much-memed images of Cardi on the stand during her assault trial in August, for which she was ultimately acquitted on all charges. Those physical releases also include eight deluxe CD boxed sets, containing merch and a copy of the CD — and there are also a variety of digital releases, including a Bonus Edition with an exclusive 24th track, “Don’t Do Too Much.”
Cardi has also been on the promotional trail getting the word out about Am I the Drama? In addition to doing an interview tour of radio stations, streamers and daytime TV shows (The Breakfast Club, Spotify and The Jennifer Hudson Show, just to name a few) in the weeks leading up to the album release, Cardi has been on a busy schedule of in-store appearances, doing photo ops and meet-and-greets with fans purchasing the album. (She started her release week at Looney Tunes in New York, and will make it across the country to Fingerprints in California by the end.)
It should all add up to a pretty considerable first-week for Am I the Drama? — perhaps not quite the equal of Invasion’s opening frame (255k, according to Luminate), but certainly comfortably into the six digits, and perhaps into the 200s. With no other debuts of its size to compete with, and KPop Demon Hunters continuing to gently recede, it should have a pretty clear path to becoming Cardi’s second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 in two tries. And if Cardi is No. 1, Atlantic Group will have successive No. 1s (with Twenty One Pilots’ Breach topping this week’s listing) for the first time since the Aug. 24-Aug. 31, 2019-dated charts, when Slipknot’s We Are Not Your Kind (Roadrunner/Atlantic Group) and Young Thug’s So Much Fun (Young Stoner Life/300/Atlantic/Atlantic Group) bowed at no. 1 in successive weeks.
Nine Inch Nails, Tron: Ares (Interscope/Walt Disney/The Null Corporation): Nothing new to see veteran composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scoring another big movie, which they’ve been doing successfully for 15 years now, since first hooking up for David Fincher’s The Social Network adaptation back in 2010. But there’s a little extra juice to the duo’s new release — the soundtrack to the upcoming Disney sequel Tron: Ares — thanks to it being recorded and released under the moniker of Reznor’s chart-topping longtime band Nine Inch Nails, of which Ross is now also an official member.
The 24-track soundtrack is mostly moody instrumentals and slamming dance-rockers along the lines of the duo’s work for last year’s Challengers, but it does also include a number of cuts with Reznor’s vocals — including lead single “As Alive as You Want Me to Be,” already a top five hit on Billboard’s Rock &Alternative Airplay chart. Sales of the set will also be helped by a number of physical variants, including both CDs and vinyl editions with alternate covers, and even a cassette edition.
Buckingham Nicks, Buckingham Nicks (Polydor/Quality/Rhino): A longtime collectors’ favorite, this early full-length collaboration between then-future Fleetwood Mac superstars Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks — self-titled under the name Buckingham Nicks — had been out of print for many decades. As the Mac catalog has proved a persistent cultural force time and time again across those years, there have been countless calls from fans for the album to once again see the light of day.
Finally, through the efforts of Rhino Records — and with the cooperation of both artists, who have been largely on the outs since Buckingham’s 2018 split from the rest of the group — the much-beloved set has at last been reissued, arriving both on streaming services and in record stores. For the latter, the set is available on CD and through multiple vinyl variants — its first-ever pressing on CD — and while it’s unlikely to challenge Cardi B’s overall numbers this week, you can bet those who have waited generations to get their hands on a copy will jump at the chance to finally own the record.
