Cardi B fans have reason to believe her new album may finally be on the horizon thanks to a mysterious Instagram account seemingly dedicated to the project.
The Bronx-bred superstar renewed excitement for her long-awaited sophomore project on Thursday (January 12) after eagle-eyed fans noticed she had started following an Instagram page with the handle @albumcb2.
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The page has yet to upload a post and still has a blank profile picture, but already boasts over 5,000 followers as of press time. The account itself follows just one person: Cardi B.
The cryptic account added fuel to the excitement by reposting a photo of Cardi in the studio on its Instagram Story. The picture was originally posted by label executive/A&R Brooklyn Johnny, who has worked with the rapper since her early career.
“Y’ALL READY?! #CardiB,” he wrote in the caption, much to the delight of his followers and Bardi Gang badge-holders alike.
Cardi B’s sophomore album has been a long time coming. Despite a trifecta of hit singles — “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, “Hot Shit” featuring Kanye West and Lil Durk, and “Up” — and lofty promises about it “stomping” the game, the project has been plagued by delays.
During a candid Instagram Live broadcast last December, Cardi admitted that anxiety and self-doubt, as well as being a mother to two young children, are partly to blame.
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“I know y’all been saying that I gotta drop this album, that I’ve been lacking,” she said. “I’ma have to be real with y’all: I feel like I have gotten too comfortable because I’m just a mom! I’ve been having a lot of anxiety ’cause I know right after I drop my album, I have to go on tour and I have bad separation anxiety from my kids.
“And then when it comes to music, I just feel like I don’t like anything. I feel like I got so many songs and I don’t like nothing, I feel like nothing is good enough. I got so much fucking money saved up that I just be like, ‘Whatever.'”
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She added: “Now, making music to me has become a job that gives me anxiety because everybody just critiques everything that I do. Sometimes you just don’t want to do something that gives you that much anxiety, so I just be like freezing myself. But I have to let that go, I have to release more music. I have to just go out there.”
The as-yet-untitled album will arrive on the heels of a shakeup to Cardi B’s team as she signed with music industry titans Irving and Jeffrey Azoff’s Full Stop Management last November. Giant Music president Shawn Holiday, who played an integral role in the deal, teased that her new album will arrive in “early 2023” via Atlantic Records.
The upcoming project will serve as the follow-up to Cardi’s Invasion of Privacy debut, which arrived to a rapturous reception in April 2018. Boasting appearances from Migos, 21 Savage, SZA and more, the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 after notching 225,000 first-week units.
It went on to win Best Rap Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards — beating out Travis Scott, Pusha T, Nipsey Hussle and Mac Miller — and has since been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry of Association (RIAA).
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The album has also written Cardi into the history books. In January 2020, it surpassed Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as the longest-charting debut album by a female rapper, while also producing two of Cardi’s record-breaking three diamond singles (“Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It”).
