38 The Nation. May 28, 2018
LIVING HER BEST LIFE
The odyssey of Cardi B
by BRIANA YOUNGER
T
hey gave a bitch two options—
stripping or lose,” snarls Cardi
B over the dramatic piano pings
and hazy synths of “Get Up
10.” It’s the opening line on
her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, and a
tone-setting declaration that reveals exactly
where she’s coming from. For Cardi B, los-
ing was never on the table.
So, as she says next, she took up danc-
ing, “in the club right across from my
school.” Much like Meek Mill’s “Dreams
and Nightmares (Intro)” from 2012, or De-
troit rhymer Tee Grizzley’s “First Day Out”
from 2016, Cardi uses the theatricality of
the slow-building production to lay out the
stakes. When she raps, “I went from rags to
riches / Went from WIC to lit / Only person
in my fam to see six figures,” it’s difficult not
to root for her.
A Bronx native born to Trinidadian and
Dominican immigrants, Cardi hit the strip
clubs after dropping out of college and being
fired from her job as a grocery-store cashier—
a decision that also provided the means to
leave a toxic relationship. Her bold personal-
ity and hilariously blunt rants and one-liners
(“A ho never gets cold,” she proclaims in one
video) brought her social-media followers in
droves, and she parlayed that popularity into
a spot on VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: New York.
What some would consider missteps, Cardi
B has turned into the stuff of stardom, and
Invasion is her Odyssey, her own “Binderella”
story, as she puts it—a momentous testament
to perseverance.In the modern era of rap, Cardi is per-
haps the first woman to achieve pop-culture
prominence without the direct assistance of a
man. Her omnipresent breakout hit “Bodak
Yellow” may take its cues from a song by a
male rapper (Kodak Black’s “No Flockin”),
but there was no co-signer, no superstar artist
offering her a wave to ride or a place to stand
next to him in videos. Her historic ascent in-
cluded earning the No. 1 spot on the Billboard
Hot 100 with “Bodak Yellow”—the second
woman, after Lauryn Hill, to do so with a solo
rap single. Invasion’s debut atop the Billboard
200 makes Cardi the fifth woman in rap to
accomplish that feat.
One of the defining features of Cardi B’sBriana Younger is a New York–based writer
whose work has appeared in The Washington
Post, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere.
Invasion of Privacy
Cardi B
Atlantic RecordsILLUSTRATION BY LOUISA BERTMAN