One week after Bad Bunny got Will Smith rapping in Spanish on “Está Rico,” we were gifted an all Spanish collaboration with Drake. What more proof do we need that Bad Bunny is Latinizing all of America.
Bad Bunny is rebuilding America and it starts with his music. Do you think you could pass the “Mia” lyrics quiz and be a part of greatness? Let’s see.
Even though she shares her life openly on Instagram and Twitter, there’s still a lot to learn about Cardi B. From her recent feud with Nicky Minaj to her early start as a member of the Bloods in the Bronx, Cardi has always been open about her life- you just need to dig deeper to find out all the juicy details. Keep clicking to find out more wild facts about this stripper-turned-rapper social media star.
This seems pretty obvious, but Cardi B is just a cute name that she picked up from her parents. Her full legal name is Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar. The fact that her sister’s name is Hennessy led to the nickname Bacardi, then Cardi, then the rest is history. The ‘B’ alternately stands for bully, or beautiful, depending on her mood.
And she’s always been proud of her roots. She recently donated $8,000 to the family of a 15-year-old boy who was a recent victim of gang violence in her old hood.
Growing up in the Highbridge neighborhood in the South Bronx, Cardi joined the Bloods at the age of sixteen, something that she proudly admitted on Twitter in 2017 after she was called out for being a poser.
After working at a grocery store in Lower Manhattan for a few years, Cardi switched to the more lucrative career of exotic dancing at the age of 19. She says that she started stripping to gain independence after being caught up in an abusive relationship, and credits her career switch with saving her life.
She appeared on the sixth and seventh seasons of the show, and allowed the cameras to follow her budding music career, as well as all the drama associated with her relationship with Tommy Geez, a rapper who at the time was serving a four-year prison sentence. She left the show in 2016 to pursue her music career full-time.
She followed up her two seasons on LHHNY with a stint on the BET show Being Mary Jane, and guest appearances on Hip Hop Squares, and Kocktails with Khloé, where she talked about what happened when she told her mom that she had become a stripper.
“Like, damn, why’d it have to be Taylor Swift? I like her, I like that damn song.”
She credits it with helping her stripping career, and says that she first started thinking about it early on. Her rationale is that people don’t come to the club to see dancers who look like they just walked off the street.
There’s a major difference between her early Instagram videos and Cardi today- her straight, white smile cost about the same as a luxury SUV.
Her loud, stream-of-consciousness videos on Instagram made her a household name, which in turn helped raise her profile enough that studios paid attention when she started dropping tracks. In school, Cardi says that she was often disruptive- not because she was a bad kid, but because she could never stop telling jokes.
Her fiancé, the rapper Offset, proposed onstage during Power 99’s Powerhouse at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The couple had started publicly dating earlier that same year.
Although she had earlier denied reports that she was pregnant, she stepped onstage to perform “Be Careful” in a curve-clinging, high-necked Christian Siriano gown that showed off an obvious baby bump.
On July 10th 2018, Cardi gave birth to her daughter, who she named Kulture Kiari Cephus. She announced the birth on her Instagram page, and later explained the meaning behind the name on Twitter by tweeting “Kulture. anything else woulda been basic. Okrrrrr”
CREDIT: @iamcardib/ Instagram
Even though her Instagram account gives her fans 24/7 access, she doesn’t plan on doing the same with her daughter’s life. While she’s posted a few photos of her daughter bassinet, the only photo she’s made public is of Kulture’s tiny hands, which was posted on Instagram on September 2nd.
Her daughter is only a few months old, but Cardi recently told People that she’s planning on being a very strict parent with daughter Kulture. “Like, you can have whatever you want, but you can’t do whatever you want,” she says.
She speaks openly about her faith, and says that she regularly receives guidance from God. Even though she’s religious, she wasn’t afraid to slay at the the 2018 Met Gala when the theme was ‘Heavenly Bodies’.
There hasn’t been a female rapper that has made a successful bid to top the charts since Eve’s Let There Be Eve in 1999. “Bodak Yellow” was the first song by a female rapper to make it to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 List in 19 years.
It’s not often that rap royalty weds rap royalty- rumor has it that both BET and VH1 are vying to secure exclusive rights to the couple’s eventual wedding ceremony.
She isn’t afraid to admit that her looks often don’t cost that much. “$100,000 on the wrist but my outfit costs like $60,” she brags. She still likes to shop in the Fordham area of the Bronx, which is full of shops selling cute clothes for cheap.
Just in 2017 alone, her net worth increased by over $2 million- that’s double her total income.
“If in order to consider someone a feminist, they have to had gone to college, got degrees, own companies, then that’s not real,” she told Latina magazine in 2016. “Why can’t someone who came from the bottom, who has a dark past, not achieve? I used to be a dancer and did what I did. I don’t have a perfect vocabulary. But I do influence people.”
