(August 16, 2025) – Cardi B just dropped a new single and video—and with them, a reminder that not all flops are created equal.
“Imaginary Playerz,” released Friday (Aug. 15), is presumably the fourth single from her long-awaited sophomore album Am I the Drama?, due in September. Sampling Rene & Angela’s 1981 soul ballad “Imaginary Playmates” (famously flipped by Jay-Z on Imaginary Player), the Bronx dynamo raps over a slow, moody beat about, what else, being the Baddest B in the game.
The song is loaded with Cardi’s signature bravado about bank accounts and fashion flexes, but it also takes on the elephant in the room: her recent catalog hasn’t produced many big hits. Instead of dodging the subject, she leans in with the most quotable line of the track:
“My flop and your flop is not the same,” she begins about two-thirds of the way into the new song. “If you did my numbers y’all would pop champagne; if I did your numbers I would hop outta planes,…”
Ouch.
It’s a stinger of a lyric—like Tom Brady calling losing three Super Bowls a “bad stretch” with seven championship rings in tow, or Elon Musk shrugging off losing $40 billion in a day when others would be thankful to earn one-millionth of that figure. The message is clear: Cardi’s worst day at the office is still bigger than most rappers’ career peaks.
It’s no secret that Cardi’s singles in the past four years have not been lighting the charts afire. Between August 2017 and August 2021, Cardi accumulated 25 top 40 singles, including 9 top ten hits and five No. 1s. In the four years since, she’s tallied just ten top 40 hits, including only four top ten singles and zero No. 1s. Of her pre-August 2021 hits, nine managed to spend more than 20 weeks on the Hot 100. In the past four years, only one – “Tomorrow 2” with GloRilla – pulled that feat (22 weeks beginning in October 2022).
But Cardi may be onto something. While most of her recent singles have fallen short of her lofty standards, they still do better on average than most female rappers’ hits. On the most recent Hot 100 dated August 17, her “Outside” was the highest ranking single by a female rapper at No. 57 (after debuting at No. 10 six weeks earlier). The remaining three female MCs on the chart – GloRilla, YKNIECE, and Latto – were at Nos. 92, 93, and 99, respectively. Cardi’s former “WAP” partner Megan Thee Stallion’s most recent single, “Whenever,” backed by a glossy video, failed to even make the Hot 100, instead bubbling under at No. 102 in April.
Other big-name rappers, like Sexyy Red, Ice Spice, and Doja Cat have also struggled with recent releases, although Sexyy and Glo did team up on the platinum single “Whatchu Kno About Me,” which peaked at No. 17 last November. Ice Spice struck out with songs like “Think U the Shit (Fart),” a No. 37-peaking hit from her full-length debut Y2K! in 2024, and “Phat Butt,” which never charted. Doja Cat fizzled this year with two high-profile singles on which she was featured: “Just Us” with Jack Harlow (debuted and peaked at No. 57 in April) and “Lose My Mind” with Don Toliver, which missed the chart altogether.
And if you’re wondering where Cardi’s arch-nemesis Nicki Minaj stands in this era, her 2024 Megan Thee Stallion diss track, “Big Foot,” sputtered after only one week on the chart at No. 23, followed by a posthumously released song by Juice WRLD on which she was featured, “AGATS2,” which peaked at No. 68 and managed just two weeks on the list.
The only female MC making a splash on the charts this year is Grammy darling Doechii, whose “Anxiety” cracked the top ten in April during a relatively long 20-week chart run. Otherwise, Cardi’s unflattering assessment of where other female rappers’ songs stand on the flop scale appears to make sense.
Whether “Imaginary Playerz” climbs the charts or fades fast remains to be seen. But with its first-day perch at No. 1 on iTunes, Cardi has already proven one point: she knows how to turn a perceived weakness into a flex.
Because in Cardi’s world, even a flop can flex harder than another rapper’s career peak.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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