The Business Of Being Cardi B
The Cardi B Effect:
A branding power rooted in specific authenticity, created and permeated by rapper Cardi B. Behavior associated with the Cardi B Effect include blunt honesty, rapping, laughing, mild to moderate twerking, tongue-curling, teeth-kissing, chart-topping and regular degular Bronx girl antics.
On August 12, 2017, Cardi B, The Bronx-hailing 25-year-old rapper, performed her now-quintuple-platinum single "Bodak Yellow" for the first time in New York, during a concert held at MoMA PS1's Warm-Up, an outdoor summer series held at the venerated museum's offshoot in Long Island City. A hometown crowd of around 4,000, from all ages and ethnic backgrounds, acted as a barometer of her ascendant stardom — the "Cardi B effect" was spreading. Quickly. Decked out in a red lace dress and a blunt black bob, Cardi's stage entrance was greeted with flashes, cheers and phones recording her every move. By the time she performed her fast-rising single, the crowd erupted in unison: "Lil b****..."
"She was like: 'Are people even going to know me here?,'" remembers Ashley Kalmonowitz, senior director of publicity at Atlantic Records, who was on the side of the stage that day.
Like the liquor in the cups of the concertgoers and the weed smoke around them, the Cardi B effect was not only perceptible, it was intoxicating — even for members of Cardi's own team. "The way the venue is set up, since it gets narrow, you can feel the energy coming from the back of the room to the front of the stage. It's amazing," DJ Sparkx, Cardi's longtime DJ, tells NPR Music.
But Cardi's trepidation the following day likely didn't come with the same initial wariness). And yet, the immediate embrace of the artistic bleeding-edge of New York meant that Cardi's crossover was underway. Over one pivotal weekend, she proved to herself and her haters that, riding the wave of "Bodak Yellow," she could rule every enclave in her city; from the Uptown bodegas to the bougie outer-borough art scene and everywhere in between.
