Howard University is offering a course built around Cardi B's second studio album, and it is more substantive than the headline might suggest. The class, officially titled "The Cardi B: Am I the Drama? The Art, Production, Marketing and Cultural Impact", launches as a 3-credit offering in Fall 2026, developed in partnership with Warner Music. Registration is open now.
The album at the center of the course, Am I the Drama?, released in November 2025, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and moved over 200,000 units in its first week. That commercial performance alone makes it academically interesting, but Howard and Warner Music are treating it as something broader: a case study in how a Black woman artist navigates power, production, and public identity in global hip hop. The course is co-taught by Dr. Msia Kibona Clark, who directs the university's Hip Hop Studies minor, and Prof. Pat Parks from the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, and will examine the album through lenses spanning business, marketing, gender studies, and live performance.
The pairing of a historically Black university and a major label building curriculum together around a current Black woman artist is notable regardless of who the subject is. At Howard, it lands with particular weight. The Hip Hop Studies program has been building this infrastructure for years, and a course like this is where that foundation shows. Whether or not Cardi B is your artist, the framework being built here is worth watching.
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