Cardi B turns up the drama in the visuals for her newest single, “Imaginary Playerz.”
The Jay-Z–sampled track, which borrows from his 1997 classic of the same name and marks the second pre-release single from her upcoming sophomore album Am I The Drama?, dropped Friday with an accompanying video.
A day earlier, Cardi shared a stroke of fate, revealing that Jay cleared the sample at a time tied to one of his most iconic albums. “When he text back, my manager, the record was clear, it was at 4:44 p.m.,” she said during an Instagram Live session.
Speaking during an X Spaces livestream on Wednesday (August 13), Cardi described “Imaginary Playerz” as a “very hip-hop record” and now a “staple” in her catalog, admitting she felt intense pressure to perfect it.
“The song is kind of long and I took my time with [it] because this song is like a staple for me and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I got to make sure that this song is good’ because I have to fucking get it approved by the one and only [Jay-Z],” she shared.
She added that if Jay hadn’t approved it, she wouldn’t have been too upset, seeing it instead as a sign to push harder. “But I’m glad that I came hard and he loved it and everybody else love it. Somebody came up to me and they said, ‘Uh, I’m not even going to lie, when you announced that you was doing Imaginary Players, I was a little nervous, but you ate that.’”
Am I The Drama?, which also features “Outside,” “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, and “Up,” drops September 19.
