Cardi B Says ‘AH HA’ Music Video Cost Over $1 Million & She Was Overcharged for Permits

Cardi Wanted a Street Video — Then the Bill Hit Seven Figures

Cardi B is pissed, and she is not having none of any of it. The Bronx superstar has been venting about the price tag attached to her new “AH HA” music video, saying a project she expected to cost roughly $250,000 ultimately ballooned to more than $1 million.

That is one cool million buckaroonies for a visual Cardi says was supposed to feel simple: a hot New York summer, neighborhood streets, people outside and the kind of loose Y2K-era energy that once made videos feel like events instead of pristine soundstage exercises.

During an X Spaces conversation, Cardi said she originally imagined the production as a relatively straightforward street shoot and figured that, because plenty of rappers make videos on neighborhood blocks, the cost would land somewhere around a quarter-million dollars. Instead, she said the final total climbed past seven figures.

Part of her frustration came from filming logistics. Cardi said she originally wanted to shoot on a smaller block in her home borough of the Bronx, but the production eventually moved to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The released video was filmed in the neighborhood and leans directly into that street-level New York atmosphere.

Cardi also said she believed she was being overcharged because of her celebrity, especially when it came to permits and the scale of the police presence around the shoot. She claimed roughly 40 NYPD officers were involved and said the amount of activity surrounding the production made it harder for her to actually work.

One important wrinkle: Cardi was speaking about what she felt the permitting and production process cost her overall. New York City’s film-permit system separates the city permit application from many of the other expenses that can come with a large public shoot, including private production costs, location logistics, crew, equipment and crowd management. Cardi has not publicly released an itemized $1 million budget.

The crowd itself did not help. Cardi said the number of spectators watching from the street left her overstimulated and made the two-day production deeply unenjoyable. Her conclusion was pretty definitive: she does not want to shoot another music video in an uncontrolled public setting like this one.

Which brings us to the irony of the whole thing: the finished video absolutely looks like the kind of early-2000s street spectacle people used to race home to catch on TRL or 106 & Park. Motorcycles, neighborhood scenes, dancers, a fire hydrant and a Kash Doll cameo all feed into a visual that feels deliberately bigger, louder and more public than most modern pop clips.

And that is where we have to lovingly disagree with Cardi on one thing. This kind of public chaos used to be part of the magic. Back in those money-music-video days, labels were dishing out enormous budgets to turn streets, neighborhoods and crowds into full-scale visual moments. Cardi may have hated making this one, but the end result has some of that very same messy, expensive, people-everywhere electricity.

Would we want to personally manage 40 cops, hundreds of onlookers and a million-dollar invoice? Absolutely not. Would we watch Cardi do it? Every single time.

Watch Cardi B’s Official “AH HA” Music Video

The Brooklyn-set visual features neighborhood street scenes, motorcycles, dancers, a fire-hydrant finale and a cameo from Kash Doll.

Source: Cardi B; official “AH HA” music video; Complex.