Cardi B Can’t Contain Her Bronx Rizz

In early September, promoting the imminent release of her second album Am I the Drama?, Cardi B celebrated with pop-ups and impromptu stops around major U.S. cities. Though she popped up in Atlanta and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the most consequential to her own history was likely her appearance in Washington Heights, where her grandmother lived as she grew up. Photos and videos from the day depict Cardi in a schoolgirl uniform atop a car parked outside the Cloud Deli at W. 159th and Amsterdam, as fans from the neighborhood swarmed the streets. After one admirer handed her a Dominican flag, she helped it up and twerked in her cardigan vest, a few months pregnant. 

For the duration of Cardi’s career in public life, she’s been a sort of peoples’ hero: As the most quotable member of Love & Hip-Hop, as a rising artist who could chat electoral politics as well as she talked shit, as a bona fide star whose most explicit lyrics about her sexual agency are as funny as they are memorable. (Still not over “macaroni in a pot.”) More recently, her raw charisma was on display in the courtroom, after a former security guard at her obstetrician’s office accused her of assault and sued her for $24 million. Cardi won the trial and her time on the stand went viral, as she fielded a confounding set of questions from the plaintiff’s lawyer about which of her hairstyles was real (babe… they’re wigs) and how long it takes to apply her acrylic nails. “Your honor,” she asked at one point, “can we have civility in the court?”