Cardi B says her third album is coming next year and teases a Europe tour

Cardi B has put a year on her next album. Speaking backstage to The Breakfast Club at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas on Friday 18 September, the rapper said the follow-up to Am I The Drama? is coming next year, and that she is not being loose about it. "I'm not even playing around," she said.

The plan she described is a retreat. "After my birthday, in November, I'm shipping myself away just to record," she told the hosts. Asked by DJ Envy how far along she is, she said two songs. Asked by Charlamagne Tha God whether fans face another long wait, she said no.

The scepticism is earned rather than unfair. Invasion Of Privacy arrived in 2018 and Am I The Drama? did not follow until 2025, a seven-year gap that became a running joke and, at points, a source of genuine frustration among people who kept asking. She has told fans before that complaining would not make it arrive faster. She had also told Vogue Arabia that work on album three had started.

What she credits for the change of pace is a change in herself. She said she has a new confidence and a new attitude, and sang the Patti LaBelle chorus to make the point, before saying she is ready.

The other half of next year is live. On a separate X Spaces session she said she is going to have a humongous tour and is going to Europe, and that the year will be a good one for her audience. The last run, the Little Miss Drama Tour, sold 453,000 tickets and grossed an estimated 70 million dollars across North America, so a European leg is a straightforward piece of arithmetic rather than a gamble.

She has not gone quiet in the meantime. AH HA arrived in July and reached the Hot Rap Songs top 10, and she features on the posthumous Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux album Prolific. The album has no title and no date; it sits on the release calendar as a 2027 entry, filed under hip-hop, and the tour will land in the tour guide when dates exist.