Music  

Cardi B… Queen Of Rap Comes To Motherland

By Chuks Nwanne

09 November 2019   |   4:07 am

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It is no longer news that queen of rap music and Grammy winner Cardi B will be visiting Africa for the first time in her music career; that’s already confirmed.

Cardi B

It is no longer news that queen of rap music and Grammy winner Cardi B will be visiting Africa for the first time in her music career; that’s already confirmed. What might interest showbiz enthusiasts is the fact that Nigeria will be her first ever gig on African soil, courtesy of Livespot Africa.

However, what is not yet certain is if the girl from the Bronx is coming with her daughter, Kulture. It would be recalled that in early 2018, amidst speculations, Cardi B appeared on Saturday Night Live revealing a baby bump, to announce her pregnancy and has since the birth of her beautiful daughter, been almost inseparable from her.

The rapper, who in an April 2019 interview, stated that she doesn’t trust anyone with her child, might just hit the Livespot X Festival stage in Lagos with Kulture; that’s if her mother and her sister don’t come along for the ride or even her husband, Offset, as they’re apparently the only ones she trusts with Kulture. Well, all these uncertainties would be laid to rest on December 7, 2019, in Lagos, where she’s billed to headline the Livespot X Festival.

Cardi B bagged the title of the Queen of Rap Music when she became the only woman to have won the best rap album award at the Grammys with a solo album. On this night, She took home the trophy for her 2018 debut Invasion Of Privacy, at the 61st Grammy Awards, beating Mac Miller’s Swimming, Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap, Pusha T’s Daytona, and Travis Scott’s Astroworld. This girl is not just popping rhymes and dollars she is a true heroine of modern day rap music.

When Cardi would post snarky videos on Instagram or Vine, either twerking in a bikini or wearing a bra as a top in a hallway, she became the mirror of many faces across America. Almost everyone wanted to see this most daring female, who was unrepentant about making the ‘Shmoney’; this was around 2013.

Not long after though, she was cast on VH1’s reality television show, Love and Hip Hop: New York season 6. She rose very quickly to stardom, as she was the most outstanding character due to her careless honesty and bluntness. Cardi was the irritant, most beloved loud mouth of the show, who gave everyone a tough time.Her most outgoing character and sass would lead her to become the breakout star of the show. She made it beautiful to see a person always get on other people’s nerves and lash out on anyone, who dared cross her path.

It was not until she bowed out of the show to focus on a music career, that many discovered who really was behind the brand, Cardi B. Sisters with another Hollywood and Instagram celebrity, Hennessy Carolina, Cardi acquired the nickname from a person, who fondly called her Bacardi, a rum brand because of her sister’s name, Hennessy. She later ditched the preceding letters and left it as Cardi, the B, she says, stands for anything depending on her daily emotions; Bully or Beautiful.

A daughter of a Dominican father and Trinidadian and Spanish mother, Carbi was raised in the High Bridge neighborhood of the South Bronx in New York and spent much time at her paternal grandmother’s home in Washington Heights. Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar, as she was originally named, became a real gang member at 16 with the Bloods, but this did not stop her dreams of going to school. She went to Renaissance High School for Musical Theatre & Technology and later entered college at the Borough of Manhattan Community College before eventually dropping out.

After working as a supermarket attendant, she lived in with an abusive boyfriend, his mother and two bulldogs, in a room before deciding to make her own money and took to stripping. On her first stripping job, she had told her mother that she worked as a babysitter. She credits stripping, as a lifeline at the time; helping her out of a dire situation and also helping her return to school before she eventually dropped out.

Cardi is being said to have invested a saved up sum from stripping on her music career. She, however, acknowledges that she wouldn’t recommend stripping to young girls because it came with a lot of insecurity about her looks. During that time, Cardi did a boob job and had a nearly fatal butt injection done at 22.

Aside Love and Hip-Hop, Cardi B also featured on several famous American TV shows including Uncommon Sense with Charlamagne in December 2015. She was also on Khloe Kardashian’s Kocktails with Khloe before joining the BET series, Being Mary Jane in November 2016, and starred in two episodes of Hip hop squares.

Her cable TV commercial for Romantic Depot, a large New York chain of Lingerie stores, which was featured on radio and cable stores promoting their products for sexual health and wellness, was recognised as the most famous cable TV commercial in the history of NYC.

In 2015, Cardi gave fans a taste of her music talent when she remixed Shaggy’s hit song Boom Boom, featuring Popcaan. Backing it up with her own single Cheap Ass Weave, she followed it up with her first mixtape titled Gangsta Bitch Music Vol 1. When she with the KSR Group released the compilation, Underestimated: The Album, a collaboration between their artistes Cardi B, HoodCelebrity, SwiftOnDemand, Cashflow Harlem and Josh X, Cardi B stated concerning her song, titled What a Girl Likes, “I wanted to make a song that would make girls dance, twerk and at the same time encourage them to get that Shmoney.”

On January 20, 2017, her mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music Vol 2, was released and was followed by her debut hit single, Bodak Yellow on June 16, 2017. Concerning Bodak Yellow, Cardi initially doubted the song as one that would eventually become a hit. In an interview with AS Amar for ‘W’ magazine, she said the song “changed my life forever…” She also stated that she was also afraid because the song was so big, she didn’t know if the next record was going to match up. “I didn’t wanna be a one hit wonder,” she said.

The same record hit double platinum in Australia and quadruple platinum in Canada, Gold in France, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and six times Platinum in the United States. It then made rap history on October 1, 2017, becoming the first song by a solo rapper to hit the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 since Lauryn Hill’s song Doo Wop (That Thing)’ in 1998 – 19 years! It stayed atop the charts tying with Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Do as the longest running female at the number one spot in 2017. She was also the first person of Dominican descent to reach number one in the history of the Hot 100, since inception.

Cardi also featured in hits like No Limit with G Eazy, Motorsport with Neos and Nicki Minaj and Finesse with Bruno Mars. Her next song, Bartier Cardi, with 21 Savage also went platinum twice each in Canada and the United States, although not meeting up with her last hit.

In April of 2018, she released her Invasion of Privacy album featuring the two songs as singles. The album itself has gone double platinum in the United States, Platinum in Britain and Canada and Platinum in New Zealand.

In February 2017, Cardi B and Offset started dating and eight months later, Offset publicly proposed to Cardi B at a concert in Philadelphia. The two were actually married one month before that with just him, her and a cousin present. There was no wedding dress, makeup or ring. Her baby Kulture Kiari Cephus was added to the union on July 10, 2018.

Coming to Africa for the first time ever, Cardi B is sure to bring in all of the crazy, gangster, no-nonsense attitude about her that we’ve all come to love. More than that, she will be performing the record breaking singles she has become popular for.

The Livespot X Festival is no show to miss this December, as it is an exciting hybrid of unique experiences, all rolled into one high octane event that promises to deliver an unprecedented level of quality, which Livespot360 is known for. A two day event to be held in Lagos and Accra, Livespot X Festival will open at 4pm on December 7 and 8, 2019, 2019 giving audiences a nice mix of live performances, music quality sound, DJ mixes, food and high end festivities.