When Is Cardi B’s New Album Really Coming Out?

Cardi giveth, Cardi taketh away.
Photo: Thaddaeus McAdams/Getty Images

Enough album speculation is enough! Cardi B’s second album is indeed coming out this year — take it from Rolling Stone. The magazine profiled Cardi for its June cover, usually a surefire sign of an album to come. Cardi had indeed promised that album earlier this spring, but just a few days before the cover, she got in a high-profile Twitter fight with a fan over the album. “Anyway NO album this year I don’t care I’m relaxing this year,” she declared on May 14. But Cardi’s publicist confirmed to Rolling Stone that the album is coming in 2024, and she deleted the tweet. “I take my music so fucking seriously that that’s why I don’t put it out,” she told the magazine. “Because if it’s not perfect to my ear, if every fucking word doesn’t sound like it’s pronounced right, if the beat is overpowering the words or the words is overpowering the beat, I don’t want to put it out.” (Her still-husband Offset has been more encouraging: “Stop being scary and drop the album, shit goes crazy,” he’s told her.)

So CB2 isn’t finished just yet. When Cardi sat for the cover, she was still working on a final few songs, and the record needed a title too. It sounds like it’ll be just as varied as Invasion of Privacy. Cardi has been recording pop tracks and rap bangers, and even said her “whole album would sound like drill” if she had the choice. (After this project, she wants to record a full album in Spanish, plus some songs inspired by Madonna’s Erotica and “Justify My Love.”) She’s also been working with fellow Bronx rapper Cash Cobain, and mentioned a collab with DJ Khaled. Okay, maybe that one doesn’t need to make the album.