The LGBTQ+ community is rife with labels, but Yungblud is offering up one that best describes his sexuality in a new interview: “I’m the f–king saucepan.” Speaking with Attitude on Thursday (July 3) for its latest cover story, the 27-year-old […]
Four years ago, drag performer Scarlet Envy was asked a very simple question ahead of her appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 6: Did she think that she would be considered the “villain” of the season?
“Is it me? Am I the drama? I don’t think I’m the drama … maybe I am,” she answered, clutching her proverbial pearls as a coy smirk crossed her face. “Am I the villain? I don’t think I’m the villain.”
Whether or not the queen was or was not “the drama” proved to be beside the point. In the weeks after the video dropped, Envy’s voice could be heard echoing across TikTok in thousands of videos, as fans, brands and celebrities — including everyone from Bridgerton‘s Nicola Coughlan to Lady Gaga herself — used the audio to ask themselves her introspective question. “It’s been a lesson to me on how you never know what the universe is going to throw at you,” Envy tells Billboard with a chuckle.
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But even a mega-viral meme couldn’t have prepared Envy for what her off-hand comment would go on to inspire. Last week, after seven years of teasing fans about her follow-up to Invasion of Privacy, rap superstar Cardi B unveiled her sophomore album would finally be dropping on Sep. 19. And the title of the new project, Am I The Drama?, came directly from Envy’s open-ended question.
Envy explains to Billboard that Cardi’s team reached out to her “a week or two” before the album announcement dropped, priming her for an announcement that had something to do with her iconic moment. “I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on,” she says. But when the announcement finally did come, the star stopped what she was doing on New York’s Fire Island and felt her jaw drop.
“At first I thought, ‘Maybe it will be some small thing about drama or something,’ but when I saw the album cover, it was just word for word, Am I the Drama?” she says. “That was crazy. Even now, thinking about it, I’m not sure that’s sunk in yet.”
But the collaboration didn’t end there — along with giving Envy a tease of the album title, Cardi’s team also asked if she would be available to join the rapper on stage for her headlining set at LadyLand, the annual queer music festival held in Brooklyn by storied nightlife purveyor Ladyfag. “I go to Ladyland every year if I can, so I was planning to be there anyway,” she says with a chuckle.
Thus, at around 1:30 in the morning on the festival’s first night, Envy emerged to a peal of cheers at Under the K Bridge, where she introduced the rap sensation. “My name is Scarlet Envy, I’m the drama,” the drag star told the crowd . “I’m blessed to introduce this performer to you. She’s an icon, she a legend and she’s a hometown hero, b—h. Give it up for the one, the only, the drama, Cardi motherf–king B!”
Envy says she got to meet Cardi backstage, and thank her for using her meme as the album title. “She had Kulture [her daughter] with her, which was so sweet,” Envy says, still beaming. “But to be on stage while she performed was pretty sickening, too. To see her point of view and her perspective on on the crowd was amazing.”
It’s the kind of collaboration that gives performers like Envy some validation, especially in the political climate that we’re living under. Over the course of the last few years, right-wing lawmakers have gone out of their way to attempt to restrict drag performers’ rights to perform in public. While most of those efforts from politicians have been blocked by federal courts, many drag artists say that their ability to perform in public without fear of reprisal has been significantly hampered by the ongoing “culture war” around drag.
So, to have one of the most popular hip-hop artists in the world not only referencing drag culture, but collaborating with drag performers for her forthcoming album is a huge deal, Envy says. “It’s bridging a bigger gap in some way than when bubblegum pop girls reference drag queens,” she explains. “We are across genres. And I think it’s important, especially in the times we’re living in right now, to remember the power of the queer people behind drag. This didn’t become viral sensation because I had a wig on. It’s because of who I am and how I said this. So whether you have on eyelashes or not, queer people are powerful, and that’s not to be taken lightly.”
Envy also can’t help but grin as she thinks about all of the marvelous spectacle that could come out of a phrase she uttered years ago. “When artists like Cardi reference this, it also just gives power to being the drama,” she says. “It gives you the power to say, ‘I am the f–king drama, I’m gonna be who I am, and I’m gonna live my life the way I want to live it. Deal with it.’”
When it comes to her future with the project, Envy says that while there might be future projects she and Cardi work together on, eager fans looking for tea on the album should not come flooding into her DMs. “I’m just in the dark as much as everyone else is, I haven’t been able to hear the album,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender to the stans.
But when it comes to the future of her career as a drag performer, and the future of her fellow drag performers for that matter, Envy keeps it short and simple: “We’re not f–king going anywhere.”
After releasing a pair of acoustic albums created from unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics — This Machine Still Kills Fascists in 2022 and Okemah Rising in 2023 — Boston’s Dropkick Murphys is making noise again with its politically charged and topical 13th studio album, For the People.
“Coming off the Woody Guthrie albums, we knew we were gonna want to bounce back in a louder, more aggressive way,” co-founder and frontman Ken Casey tells Billboard. “It wasn’t necessarily a plan; we just knew we’d be ready to be loud, and I think it comes across that we’ve been waiting to do that.”
Call that an understatement. For the People‘s 12 tracks (out July 4 via Dummy Luck Music) blaze forth with punky, Celtic-flavored ferocity, from the galloping opener “Who’ll Stand With Us?” through the slashing attack of “Kids Games” and the grinding assault of “Fiending For the Lies.” Billy Bragg guests on a cover of Ewan MacColl’s “School Days Are Over,” while Dublin quartet The Scratch joins the Murphys for the reeling “Longshot” and “One Last Goodbye (Tribute to Shane),” a spirited and mildly irreverent tribute to the late Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan.
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Fans will be particularly pleased to hear vocalist Al Barr, who’s been on leave caring for his mother in her battle with Lewy body dementia, on “The Vultures Circle High” where he returns to trade lines with Casey.
“We’re always in touch, and I always keep him abreast of how we’re making out with the process,” says Casey. “He wanted to hear a couple of demos and I sent him (‘The Vultures Circle High’); we’ve always had these songs over the years where literally I’d say one person physically can’t sing them because it’s meant to be a trade-off, almost like a relay race. [I said] ‘Hey, Al, I think this would be a good one for you to join me on.’ He was like, ‘Oh, man, I’ll have to get practicing,’ [because] he’s taken a couple years off and hasn’t been singing or anything. But it’s really second nature. I think he did a great job.”
For the People‘s guest list also features Ireland’s the Mary Wallopers on “Bury the Bones,” while Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge takes part on “The Big Man,” a track that serves as Dropkick’s salute to him. “We’ve had a long history of having guests on our albums before people really had guests regularly,” Casey notes. “It’s just something we’ve always loved doing, and we’re doing it with actual kindred spirits who we respect and share something in common with.”
Casey adds that the band wanted to give an opportunity to artists who otherwise might not have a bigger audience in the U.S. through their new album. “In terms of The Scratch and Mary Wallopers, it’s maybe a way to give them a little bit of a hand with introducing them to some new people in America; they’re doing fine in other parts, but we feel like there’s some Dropkick Murphys fans who haven’t heard of them yet,” he says.
The album’s overtly political topics should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the band. “We have a long history of speaking out about issues that are important to us,” says Casey, though he adds that he’s “a little more worried now” after Donald Trump’s election last November and all that’s transpired since. Most of the songs were written while on the road during the presidential campaign in the fall and recorded during December and January, while “Who’ll Stand With Us?,” with its declaration that “we fight the wars and build the buildings for someone else’s gain” came after the election and dovetails with the furor over the wealth inequalities in Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts and aspects of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
“The lyrics to that song work at any time,” says Casey. “That’s always been the case of the wealthy and the powerful trying to take away the rights of those with less than them. The same old playbook’s being repeated — immigration, racism, whatever the tools are that are used to divide people are being put into place once again. We bicker amongst each other while the ultra-wealthy siphon everything that’s left out the back door.
But Casey notes that in 2025, there is one major difference to the strategies being employed by those in power. “They’ve become so good at this game that they’ve now got 50 percent of regular people openly supporting the billionaires and what they do,” he says. “They seem to know that they’re giving all the power to the wealthy and the elite, and somehow they’re OK with it, thinking somewhere down the line it’s gonna work out for them — which is never the case.”
Casey adds that despite the album’s tenor, the Murphys did not see the writing on the wall during the fall. “I didn’t think (Trump) was going to win,” he recalls. “I remember saying at the last show we played prior to the election, ‘I hope this is the last time I gotta utter the f—ing a–hole’s name out of my mouth.’ I really believed it would be. Little did I know.”
But while working with Guthrie’s famous protest lyrics was on-brand for Casey and company, the exercise did not make a specific impact on For the People. “I think we’ve always been inspired by his lyrics, in general” Casey explains. “When you talk about Woody’s approach to songwriting, the idea is if you’ve got a couple of good chords, don’t screw it up. If you’ve got a story to tell, don’t over-complicate it … Obviously we’ve always been inspired by protest music, whether in the form of punk rock, Americana, the Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie mode or even going back to traditional Irish music. We think America is in a time of crisis, and so being the band we are, we’re gonna sing about it.”
Casey is confident that protest will be a theme of Dropkick Murphys’ Summer of Discontent tour with Bad Religion and the Mainliners, which kicks off July 22 in Spokane, Wash. “We’re trying to find that balance of not letting the bad things that are happening consume you, but at the same time standing up and speaking up as well,” he says. “That’s what we do; we’re excited to be able to stand with people in protest but also help take their minds off life and tough times, whether it be politics or just the everyday worries of trying to live life in 2025.”
Dropkick Murphys also plans to perform in Europe during the fall, then roll into a 2026 itinerary that will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the band, with a number of other tours and celebrations planned.
“That’s a tough one to get my head around, to be honest with you. We started on bet to put a band together on two, three weeks’ notice and open for my friend’s band,” Casey recalls. “The goal was to win a $30 bet, which at the time was a lot of money — and he never paid me! And here we are 30 years later, so be careful what bets you accept and what you wish for. You might go on a rollercoaster ride you weren’t expecting.”
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