Cardi B is taking a much-deserved victory lap since cracking the top on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with her fast-rising hit, "Bodak Yellow." She is the hottest thing in hip hop at the moment, and is being embraced by the kinds of mainstream figures that can potentially enable the cross-genre appeal that turned Nicki Minaj into a regular on Ellen. But as the Bronx rapper finds her career accelerating, she also finds herself faced with the task of engaging a newer, different kind of audience. On Sunday, August 20, Cardi put the breaks on the train just to touch on some things that those who assume she is some kind of overnight success, might not be aware of.
"You know what I hate about you new followers that just started, like, getting to know me because you see me in blogs and s**t? That y'all stay assuming. Y'all think that, 'Oh, you know, little Bodak Yellow came out and boom!' It was just that easy for me," Cardi started off her rant by saying. The 24-year-old music/television/social media triple threat may have come up from hustling in the stripper game to dominating Instagram, but she would be the furthest thing from an Instagram rapper, and she just had to let the people know. From frequenting small podcasts, to touring hole-in-the-wall clubs, to shaking down radio DJ's, there was no machine behind her rise, she says. "I got rejected by my favorite artists. Nobody really wanted to do a feature with me. Labels didn't really wanted to sign me, or they wanted to sign me for some bulls**t a** amount."
In a few short years, Cardi went from working as a cashier in TriBeCa to becoming a star on VH1 and BET. Sure, along the way she's worked media towards building a base that would be ripe to receive her for when she dropped her Gangsta B***h Music mixtape series, but she has continuously set herself up to advance into a new realm, simply by being herself. And as she tells it, Cardi wasn't about to get on the first label to make her an offer. The way she built her leverage by flipping her internet fame into a role on Love and Hip Hop, and then having the credibility and star-power she gained serve her in her venture towards the music business is a testament to her vision and business savvy. Or to put it in her own eloquent words: "I really been hustling for this motherf**king s**t. This s**t was not given to me b***h!"
Source: instagram.com
