<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/em><\/p>\n At the sold-out final stop of Cardi\u00a0B\u2019s 35-show arena tour\u2014the highest-grossing<\/a> debut arena tour by a female rapper\u2014former President Jimmy Carter\u2019s daughter was in attendance. She was at the Atlanta stop not just to see Cardi perform, along with the thousands of others who\u2019ve come to her \u201cLittle Miss Drama\u201d tour this year; she had brought with her a personally signed copy of her dad\u2019s 2010 book White House Diary<\/em>. He had signed it for Cardi before his death in 2024, his daughter waiting for the chance to meet her with gift in hand. \u201cThis is Jimmy Carter\u2019s signature,\u201d Cardi said after the show, clutching the book to her chest. \u201cCan you believe that shit?\u201d<\/p>\n Amy Carter is an unlikely member of the Bardi Gang, but Cardi\u2019s fascination with politics and history is well documented. \u201cI love government,\u201d she told GQ<\/a> in 2018. \u201cI\u2019m obsessed with presidents. I\u2019m obsessed to know how the system works.\u201d Her favorite president is, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. \u201cHe\u2019s the real \u2018Make America Great Again,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she said in the GQ profile. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for him, old people wouldn\u2019t even get Social Security.\u201d<\/p>\n In April, Cardi finished off her tour, cementing herself as one of the most in-demand rappers around. She sold more than 450,000 tickets and is the first female rapper to sell out consecutive shows at Madison Square Garden, in New York, and the Kia Forum, in Los Angeles. Her 2025 album, Am I the Drama?<\/em>, was guaranteed platinum<\/a> before it was even released. It immediately hit No.\u00a01 on the Billboard 200 album charts. She seems to have relegated Bia<\/a> to the Khia asylum<\/a> with just one song.<\/p>\n \n Her audience was less compelled by politics, drawn instead by something both more nebulous and more powerful: her values<\/em>.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n At her D.C. show last month, her audience was full of fans much like Amy Carter: people who love her music but also really dig her vibe. Sixteen-year-old Sydney Walker came with her mom and a 2000s-era digital camera and was vibrating with anticipation for Cardi\u2019s performance. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t let people belittle her. She always has something to say to defend herself,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s just strong and powerful and catchy, and yeah! I just love her!\u201d<\/p>\n Cardi\u2019s tickets, which cost anywhere from a few hundred bucks to several thousand dollars, were pricey enough in Washington that most of the audience were women in their 30s and 40s, the kinds of people who can afford a $500 seat in the nosebleeds. Dressed in schoolgirl miniskirts, homemade tees with Cardi\u2019s face emblazoned on the front in rhinestones, business-casual tube tops and go-go boots, her audience was less compelled by politics, drawn instead by something both more nebulous and more powerful: her values<\/em>. \u201cI like that she\u2019s aware on political views and political statements,\u201d Walker\u2019s mother, Chandra Walker, said. \u201cI really have no idea what Cardi\u00a0B\u2019s political views are, but I assume they\u2019re not to that<\/em> particular side, or my daughter would have an issue with it.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s that same spirit that brings a member of the Carter family to a show, or that makes her 164\u00a0million Instagram followers listen with rapt attention when the star talks about inflation, as she did in 2023. \u201cLettuce was, like, $2 a couple of months ago, and now it\u2019s, like, fucking $7,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I<\/em> think that shit is crazy, I can only imagine what middle-class people, or people in the hood, is motherfucking thinking!\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just internet pablum that Cardi\u2019s offering, obvious statements about how food is expensive or how rent is too damn high. In 2019 she sat down with Bernie Sanders at a nail salon in Detroit to talk about capitalism and universal healthcare. She spent much of the previous election stumping for Kamala Harris, reading off her phone, \u201cTrump says he\u2019s going to protect women whether they like it or not,\u201d before screaming, \u201cI DON\u2019T WANT IT!\u201d In April, right before performing at Madison Square Garden, she announced universal 2-K childcare<\/a> for New Yorkers with Mayor Zohran Mamdani. This month, she\u2019ll be judging a jingle competition for the mayor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n From her beginnings as a principled stripper to her time as the most interesting and viral character on Love & Hip Hop<\/em>, Cardi has always found a way to sidestep any real controversy and explain herself in full. Even when she\u2019s sued\u2014as she was in 2018, when a security guard alleged that the rapper had assaulted her<\/a>\u2014she wins, both literally (the suit was dismissed) and culturally (she turned her memeified face into collector\u2019s album covers <\/a>of the latest record). Female artists like her sometimes fall victim to a lousy husband, a music industry that doesn\u2019t reward them, or, sometimes, poorly conceived political stances. Cardi has, despite all the odds stacked against her (and we know all about them because she tells us so often and so clearly), avoided so many of the typical crises that befall famous women like her. Somehow, everyone is rooting for this girl from the Bronx to become the most successful female rapper around.<\/p>\n It took Onika Maraj a decade and a half to become Nicki Minaj; at just 33 years old, Cardi has found her footing in half that time, and often through a political bent that remains on message, improbably down-to-earth (at least for a woman rumored to be worth more than $80\u00a0million<\/a>), and very funny. Wealth and fame tend to cloud perspectives of politics, economics, and cultural shifts. Cardi has managed to evade controversy mostly by meaning what she says, no matter her income bracket. You can\u2019t guilt her into a Notes App apology; unlike other celebrities, she has opinions about everything and remains unguarded enough to share them.<\/p>\n \u201cBitch,\u201d Cardi said at her opening night <\/a>in Palm Desert, California, in February, \u201cif ICE comes in here, we\u2019re gonna jump their asses. I\u2019ve got some bear mace in the back! They ain\u2019t taking my fans, bitch.\u201d In response<\/a>, the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s X account posted: \u201cAs long as she doesn\u2019t drug and rob our agents, we\u2019ll consider that an improvement over her past behavior.\u201d Cardi had previously talked about robbing men in hotels<\/a> when she worked as a stripper as a means for survival, information the government was trotting out to attempt to humiliate her.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s hard to embarrass someone who sees herself and the world clearly, especially someone who\u2019s been talking with the same authenticity at 33 as she was at 23. \u201cIf we talking about drugs let\u2019s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them,\u201d she replied<\/a>. \u201cWhy yall don\u2019t wanna talk about the Epstein files?\u201d<\/p>\n Belcalis Alm\u00e1nzar, born in the early \u201990s in Washington Heights in Manhattan to a Dominican father and Trinidadian mother, is no nepo baby. As a teenager, Cardi was a cashier at an Amish market before getting fired. She started stripping at 19 until her early 20s, an origin story she doesn\u2019t shy from. \u201cI feel like a lot of people want me to lie and be like, I hated it, I went through so much things, I don\u2019t recommend it<\/em>,\u201d she told Howard Stern in 2018<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t tell girls to go do it, but I\u2019m not even going to front: It really saved me.\u201d It\u2019s a past life that Cardi could easily feel ashamed of or hide from the public entirely, considering her Birkin-wearing lifestyle. Instead, it just lends more credibility to her authenticity. Her values in her early adulthood were all about survival. What\u2019s more relatable than just wanting to stay alive?<\/p>\n In Atlanta, her tour set started out with \u201cGet Up 10,\u201d in which she raps, \u201cLook, you gave a bitch two options: stripping or lose \u2026 Mama couldn\u2019t give it to me, had to get it at Sue\u2019s.\u201d (Cardi used to strip at Sue\u2019s Rendezvous, in Mount Vernon, New York, now closed after 45 years in business.) In a 2016 interview<\/a>, she discussed the very real conditions that sent her to strip. \u201cI was poor as hell. I was living with my ex-boyfriend that was beating my ass, I had to drop out of school,\u201d she said. \u201cHow was I gonna leave if I only made $200 every week?\u201d<\/p>\n She was trying to break into the music scene by the time she joined the VH1 reality show Love & Hip Hop: New York<\/em> in 2015. Already, Cardi was in control of her public narrative, instinctively aware of where the cameras were and how to play to them. \u201cI\u2019m just a regular-degular-shmegular girl from the Bronx, I be dancing all around America, hosting all around America, and my goal is to make that shmoney and turn everything up,\u201d she said in her introduction. No longer stripping, Cardi was portrayed as a young woman still finding poise while also rejecting whatever was expected of her. In Season\u00a06, she goes to an etiquette class, taking it about as seriously as it deserves: \u201cOh, it\u2019s lovely<\/em>,\u201d she said of her tea in a fake British accent, before cackling uproariously and saying her nails are too long to hold the cup by its handle.<\/p>\n \n She speaks through the lens of someone who hasn\u2019t forgotten what it\u2019s like to be broke, or the fact that other people still\u00a0<\/span>are.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n There were plenty of rap B- and C-list celebrities on Love & Hip Hop<\/em> while Cardi was on the show\u2014Yandy Smith-Harris, Erica Mena, Remy Ma, Joe Budden, and Amina Buddafly, all of whom were more established in the music industry than Cardi. Somehow, she still got away with throwing a shoe<\/a> at a reunion taping and screaming \u201cWHAT WAS THE REASON, BITCH?\u201d at a co-star who said she didn\u2019t like her. She ends up being the voice of reason in a love triangle between two women and their dishonest partner. \u201cMen like you need to get used,\u201d she says to Peter Gunz, who otherwise kept escaping any real accountability for cheating on the mothers of his many children. \u201cHave more respect for them. This is how you show your daughters how women should get treated?\u201d None of it is behavior that seems out of the norm for present-day Cardi. The same energy she gave to Gunz is how she talked to organizers<\/a> of the Atlanta show earlier last month when she said she was mistreated by the staff.<\/p>\n Fame and money came quickly after Love & Hip Hop<\/em>. By 2017, she was dating Offset, one of the members of Migos. She had her first child with him in 2018, the same year she released her debut album, Invasion of Privacy<\/em>. But she might have gotten the most press around that time for her plastic surgery, from breast augmentation to butt injections. It was her dental work, though, that marked the first big shift toward real fame and significant wealth. Even in \u201cfixing\u201d her teeth, she was criticized for changing herself when the money came. \u201cPeople used to talk about my teeth all the time,\u201d she said in 2017. \u201cAnd now they\u2019re talking about my boobs. I can\u2019t please everybody.\u201d Instead of hiding from rumors about plastic surgery, or pretending as if she couldn\u2019t afford a little personal enhancement, she rapped about it in her breakout 2017 hit \u201cBodak Yellow.\u201d It\u2019s a song about making money\u2014this time not by stripping but through her own agency, a way to take care of herself and also her entire family. \u201cAnd I pay my mama\u2019s bills,\u201d she raps. \u201cAnd I just checked my accounts, turns out I\u2019m rich, I\u2019m rich, I\u2019m rich.\u201d<\/p>\n And so when Cardi does engage with politics, as she often does, she speaks through the lens of someone who hasn\u2019t forgotten what it\u2019s like to be broke, or the fact that other people still are. \u201cY\u2019all thought that [Trump] was gonna be y\u2019all hero\u2014he don\u2019t fucking like you,\u201d she said last fall<\/a>. \u201cHe ain\u2019t for you. And now ain\u2019t no fucking food stamps. Y\u2019all motherfuckers are going to have to hunt raccoons and shit for Thanksgiving.\u201d It\u2019s a powerful kind of sincerity from someone who yanked herself out of poverty and refuses to conceal the way she got there. Her 2019 interview with Sanders<\/a> reflects someone who wants things to be easier for others than they were for her. \u201cWhen I was not famous, I just felt like, no matter how many jobs I got, I wasn\u2019t able to make ends meet,\u201d she tells the senator. \u201cWhat are we gonna do about wages in America?\u201d<\/p>\n Relatability is a key selling point for almost all forms of female celebrity. And hey, what\u2019s more relatable than a famous woman married to a guy who sucks?<\/p>\n Engaged to Offset in 2017 and secretly married the following year, she revealed her pregnancy in 2018 on her Saturday Night Live<\/em> debut. They broke up at the end of that year following months of rumors that Offset was cheating. Weeks later, he interrupted her set at Rolling Loud Festival in L.A., bringing out three boxes of flowers that spelled out Take Me Back Cardi<\/em>, an estimated $15,000 display. Cardi looked irritated at the time, and fans pleaded with her online to walk away and never look back, but they reconciled by 2019. By 2020 she filed for divorce, then called off the divorce, before having another baby in 2021 and again in 2024. The ride was rocky, but fans had no need to consult the tabloids about her marriage. She rolled out the tumult of her relationship mostly on her own social accounts.<\/p>\n Things were sour again by 2025, and she responded to Offset\u2019s request for spousal support online. \u201cWord to my mother: I want you to die. But I want you to die fucking slow,\u201d she said. \u201cI want you to die slow in the bed. And when you die\u00a0\u2026 you gotta think of me.\u201d She posted on X that Offset was allegedly harassing and stalking her, threatening to harm himself, to harm her, and to release videos of the two of them having sex. She also claimed that he and his mom had robbed her<\/a> at the beginning of the year, that he didn\u2019t buy their kids anything for Christmas, and that he was refusing to sign the divorce papers.<\/p>\n Cardi still says she\u2019s the sole provider for their three shared children; money, again, is not a conversation she avoids. Last year, she detailed all her kids\u2019 expenses<\/a>: $45,000 private school, $300 piano lessons, gymnastics, boxing classes, $3,000 to her cousins to babysit her older kids, hundreds in nanny fees, and a personal chef for the children from 7\u00a0a.m. to\u00a05 p.m. But despite her newfound economic bracket, her kids seem to be raised like a lot of first-generation immigrant kids are, with some pressure to perform academically and \u201cmandatory\u201d tutoring four times a week after school. \u201cThere\u2019s things I cannot do that I want my kids to do,\u201d she told Jay Shetty<\/a> in a 2025 interview. \u201cI want you to be a hundred-times-better version of me. I\u2019m going to install that in you.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, after her divorce, Cardi had her fourth child, this time with New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs. While they were public together as a couple, Diggs had three more children with three other women the same year Cardi gave birth to their son. It was another unorthodox life event that Cardi addressed directly, and not too seriously. \u201cThat\u2019s your baby daddy, bitch. That\u2019s my baby daddy too, girl,\u201d she said<\/a> while preparing dinner for her family. \u201cWell, what now? I don\u2019t fucking know. We\u2019ll figure it out, bitch.\u201d While some criticize her for having so many kids across different fathers, she\u2019s upfront about her spending in a way that makes it clear she can afford these children, with or without their dads.<\/p>\n In Cardi, both the NFL and Diggs got a publicity boost. Cardi wasn\u2019t just his girlfriend but a kind of mascot, going to his games and sitting with Patriots owner Robert Kraft in his private booth, a WAG type for anyone who doesn\u2019t care for Taylor Swift. It should have been Diggs\u2019 time at the Super Bowl in February\u2014new baby (babies?), a girlfriend far more famous and perhaps even richer than him, and an opportunity to win a championship ring. Instead, attention was all on Cardi when she gave him a terse \u201cgood luck<\/a>\u201d through reporters before the game, barely masking her disdain for him.<\/p>\n And after all that? Diggs lost the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n A nontraditional family structure is just more commonality between her and her fans. Around 17\u00a0percent<\/a> of children in the U.S. live in blended families, predominantly with a mother and stepparent, or a mother and half-siblings. Hating the fathers of her children, too, is just another way to be relatable. Her audience isn\u2019t necessarily interested in her taking the high road<\/a>. Cardi engages in politics in a direct way, yes: by speaking to politicians, by rapping to \u201call my hoes who wear the pants like Kamala,\u201d by angrily posting about Donald Trump\u2019s restrictions on SNAP benefits. But she has also figured out the politics of hating a man who fucked up. Much of her second album, Am I the Drama?<\/em>, seems focused on processing the harm done by Offset, a man she once loved. And even though she\u2019s since been seen with Diggs again, both at her shows and later, outside a club following one of her after-parties, there\u2019s a sense that you just can\u2019t really fuck with her. Why would you try? She might make a whole album about you.<\/p>\n At her D.C. show, her line about Kamala doesn\u2019t get much of a response. But when she raps \u201cCall your mama and tell her she raised a bitch,\u201d it feels as if the arena could split in half, the sheer force of 20,000 women singing it right back to her.<\/p>\n Before Cardi came onstage in D.C., her DJ was hyping the crowd up. \u201cIf your parents or grandparents weren\u2019t born in the United States, I want you to make some noise,\u201d he blared into his microphone, before playing Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cTit\u00ed Me Pregunt\u00f3.\u201d (Among the last songs he plays is Vanessa Carlton\u2019s \u201cA Thousand Miles,\u201d which is received with the same gusto.)<\/p>\n Big arena tour notwithstanding, there are markers to remind you of who Cardi was before she became this version of herself. Preshow, the screens play an ad for her hair care line, showing Cardi wrapping her hair in a plastic takeout bag. When she emerges, she looks more like an otherworldly Beyonc\u00e9 in a Maleficent-like headdress, long black coat, and sparkling thigh-high boots. But Beyonc\u00e9 is purposefully unknowable; she posts only what\u2019s highly curated and edited, she gives her audience no clear glimpse into her family turmoil beyond well-constructed metaphors in song, and her billionaire status makes her untouchable in the same way Jeff Bezos is beyond cultural reach. Her hair care line, C\u00e9cred, makes sense mostly because her mother was a hairdresser; the story of her branding is still cached in metaphors and illusions. Cardi just tells you outright who she is.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know who Beyonc\u00e9 is. The difference with Cardi is she gets on our level,\u201d said 38-year-old Ashlen Zazycki, who came to the show from Florida with her friend. \u201cHer social media for me is low enough that I feel like that\u2019s my homegirl from the streets, but high enough to know that\u2019s an A-list celebrity.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite her very unrelatable wealth, Cardi still operates online like one of the thousands of women and girls who have come to this D.C. show. She\u2019s performing for thousands, but between songs, the energy is that of sneaking into your big sister\u2019s room to gossip. \u201cOur backgrounds are similar. We came from the hood,\u201d Zazycki said. \u201cTo see her come from the gutter and now she\u2019s at Capital One Arena, 20,000 people, from Love & Hip Hop<\/em> to this? It\u2019s an inspiration to see someone can come from the same neighborhood and now they\u2019re packing sold-out arenas worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Cardi has found authenticity through failure and through sincerity.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n For this audience, the appeal is not just the music, not just her fashion (though Zazycki admits she started wearing Fashion Nova jeans after Cardi did), and not just her personality. Cardi has found authenticity through failure and through sincerity. When she\u2019s mad at Offset, she\u2019ll tell you about it. Her immigrant mother mentality speaks to the other Black and brown women in attendance, who admire her stern but loving attitude toward her kids. Her politics are secondary\u2014no one is here because of her voting record\u2014but they do like how she takes care of her children, her community, and her own pocketbook. \u201cShe cares about women\u2019s equality no matter what station in life they\u2019re in. I just like that she\u2019s a girl\u2019s girl and she wants everyone\u2014Black, brown, whatever\u2014to be treated fairly,\u201d Zazycki said. \u201cYou don\u2019t see that with someone at her status.\u201d<\/p>\n Midshow, Cardi\u2019s DJs do a $5,000 giveaway for whoever shakes the best ass. The winner is a heavily pregnant Black woman in a sheer black bodysuit, dancing with impressive verve. It\u2019s a hands-down victory, according to the crowd\u2019s cheering: If Cardi can perform (and has performed) pregnant, raunchy and fun and unburdened, why can\u2019t everyone here do the same thing?<\/p>\n