Cardi B is giving fans a little more drama with the video for her latest single, “Imaginary Playerz.”
The Jay-Z sampled track, which takes from his 1997 song of the same name and serves as the second pre-release single from her upcoming sophomore album Am I The Drama?, arrived on Friday alongside a visual.
On Thursday, Cardi revealed a moment of serendipity, explaining that Jay cleared the sample for her song at a time of day synonymous with one of the Brooklyn native’s most noteworthy albums. “When he text back, my manager, the record was clear, it was at 4:44 pm,” she explained during an Instagram Live session.
During an X Spaces livestream on Wednesday (August 13), Cardi said “Imaginary Playerz” is a “very hip-hop record” that she now considers a “staple” in her discography. However, she also described an immense pressure to get it right.
“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 to get it approved by the one and only [Jay-Z],” she said on the stream.
She continued, “If he didn’t approve it, I probably wouldn’t even feel a certain type of way neither because it would have been like, ‘Okay, maybe I just had to come a little bit 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.’”
Cardi B’s Am I The Drama?, featuring “Outside,” “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, and “Up,” will be released on September 19.
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