Cardi B
In the wake of her split from estranged husband Offset, hit-making rapper Cardi B is ready to show she’s “Outside” for the summer. The Bronx-bred MC is back with her first solo single of 2025 and is setting the stage for her long-awaited sophomore album.
“Outside” is believed to be a direct shot at Offset as Cardi prepares to return to music in full force. She announced earlier this month that she turned in her second album to Atlantic Records, more than seven years after the release of her Grammy-winning debut Invasion of Privacy. “I’m finally feeling ready,” she said during a recent Instagram Live. “Y’all waited long enough. It’s ‘go’ time.”
“When I tell you these n***as ain’t sh**t, please believe me / They gon’ f**k on anything, these n***as way too easy / Good-for-nothing, low-down dirty dogs, I’m convinced / Next time you see your mama, tell her how she raised a b***h,” she raps on the track.
Though a large chunk of time has passed since her last LP, Cardi’s dominance in hip-hop hasn’t faded. She notched back-to-back number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “WAP” in 2020 and “Up” in 2021 and other top-10 hits with last year’s “Enough (Miami)” and her 2022 GloRilla collab “Tomorrow 2.”
Cardi teased the forthcoming album in a Billboard interview in April and promised something unlike anything currently in the zeitgeist. “I almost want to say the name because that’s what it’ll be about,” she said. “I feel like my album is messy. She’s a messy queen.”
“I feel like it’s unexpected and I feel like it’s something that’s not really out right now,” she continued. “It’s gonna be things that people do expect me and a lot of things people don’t expect from me.” The rollercoaster of her life over the past year – from filing for divorce a second time last July and having her third child in September to her new relationship with New England Patriots player Stefon Diggs this spring – has played a key role in the upcoming project.
“It’s a lot of lover girl things, too, on my album. I’ve been heartbroken and then I’m loving again, and then I’m exploring again,” she added, though she noted there’ll be music to “fight” to as well.
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