This post originally APPEARED on stereogum.com
Cardi B could’ve gone out like Desiigner, or Mims. When New York rappers arrive with out-of-nowhere crossover smashes, they usually don’t go on to long and prosperous careers. Cardi’s ascent — stripper to Instagram influencer to reality-TV star to chart-topping rapper — was already an improbable story. When “Bodak Yellow” went supernova, it could’ve easily overshadowed everything else that Cardi would ever do. But that wasn’t going to happen. Cardi was a star, and she was going to make sure that the world knew it. Very quickly, the world found out.
In the time after “Bodak Yellow,” Cardi B went on a run. She rapped exciting, attitudinal guest-verses on a bunch of other people’s songs — Migos’ “Motorsport,” G-Eazy’s “No Limit,” Bruno Mars’ “Finesse” — and turned those songs into hits. Her own “Bodak Yellow” follow-up, the 21 Savage collab “Bartier Cardi,” peaked at #14. Other than “Finesse,” these were hard-ass rap songs, not brazen crossover attempts, but they crossed over anyway. More importantly, Cardi became an irresistible force in public life. Her whirlwind romance with Migos member Offset made her a gossip-column fixture, and she was charming enough to make the most of her mainstream-media hits. I liked when she co-hosted The Tonight Show and told John Mulaney that he looked like the Pet Shop Boys.
When you’re a big-deal rapper and a media industry unto yourself, you’re already most of the way to pop stardom. Cardi’s bosses at Atlantic Records didn’t give her debut album the perfunctory rollout that so many viral rappers get. Instead, those execs got deep into the weeds while helping Cardi craft her LP. They worked especially hard on a big, brassy Latin-rap anthem, figuring that they could have a song-of-the-summer contender if they played their cards just right. That kind of too-many-cooks label meddling can really smother a new rapper, giving off flop-sweat effort rather than smooth assurance. But Cardi’s voice was too loud to be smothered, and anyway these particular label execs had the right instincts. You can see all the hit-by-numbers calculation at work on “I Like It,” Cardi’s second chart-topper, but the song caught all the right waves and roped in a couple of other ascendant stars. This time, the effort paid off.
