https://www.gq.com/story/cardi-b-invasion-of-privacy-profile
A very sincere profile into Cardi B and who she is, very interesting woman and I hope all goes well for her. There's a lot more than what I quoted so, yeah
A very sincere profile into Cardi B and who she is, very interesting woman and I hope all goes well for her. There's a lot more than what I quoted so, yeah
"I love political science," says Cardi, tucking into: Brussels sprouts with bacon, mashed potatoes with lobster, macaroni and cheese with optional truffle upgrade, shrimp cocktail with lemon and salt on the side, and a Coke with extra ice. We know the West Hollywood restaurant Cardi selected for dinner is good because, a member of her team explained earlier, Drake ate here last night. "I love government. I'm obsessed with presidents. I'm obsessed to know how the system works.
"First of all," continues Cardi B, "he helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great—make America great again for real. He's the real 'Make America Great Again,' because if it wasn't for him, old people wouldn't even get Social Security."
I didn't know he started Social Security.
"Yes," she says, nodding. She has baby-doll features: big eyes, round face, minimal chin. "Yes, from the New Deal. It was a system to get us back from the world Depression—then, on top of that, while he was president there was a fucking war going on. World War II was going on. So all this shit going on in the United States, while recouping the country from an economic tragedy, making sure that America won the war—and his wife? I would say she was almost like Michelle Obama. She was such a good humanitarian, and we both got the same birthday, October 11th."
Cardi unleashes her recollections of FDR's life and accomplishments in a passionate torrent that assumes no prior knowledge on the part of the listener and follows no time line. She knows which president succeeded Roosevelt (his vice president, Truman) and which preceded him (Hoover). She gives a brief overview of the 22nd Amendment. She used to be able to list all the U.S. presidents in order of term but is too nervous to try it in front of me. As a compromise, she invites me to name any president.
Cardi was raised bilingual in the Bronx. Her mother came to the United States from Trinidad as an adolescent; Cardi characterizes her English as "broken." Her father, from the Dominican Republic, speaks to his daughter exclusively in Spanish.
For listeners, Cardi's distinct vocal patterns are part of the appeal of her rap style. She makes English sound way more fun than it is. "Do you want to know something?" Cardi asks. "That's my biggest problem, that takes me a long time in the booth. I be trying to pronounce words properly and without an accent. Each and every song from my album, I most likely did it over five times, because I'm really insecure about my accent when it comes to music. In person, I don't care."
But people love that about you.
"No, like—it got to sound good. Like, for example: 'I'm turning you awhn,' " she says, hitting the word hard, the way a New Yawkawho's walkin' heah might bang on the hood of a taxi while taking a bite out of a big apple. "I will say, 'turning you awhn,' not 'turning you on.' See, I give you an example. 'Turn Offset awhff.' There's that 'awhff.' Turn Offset off. Shit like that drives me insane."
She demonstrates a few other examples—"Get awhff me"—to illustrate the distance between her actual and her ideal. Listening to Cardi carefully practice the flat, wide vowels of a Coloradan weather woman is a little heartbreaking, in part because we're too late to stop her; she's already nailed them. Cardi knows people still want her to be the girl who turned them awhn, but to her, the thing that makes her sound different from her peers isn't charming—it's embarrassing. "It's a really bad pet peeve of mine," she says. "I can't help it.
Cardi is close to both of her parents and describes her upbringing as strict. She wasn't allowed to attend sleepovers—"ever"—on her mother's reasoning that "first of all, you all are having sex; you're not supposed to have sex. Second, you never know if there's men in the house, and you never know if you'll get molested." Her mother likely also wanted to keep her near home because Cardi was, in her own words, "a very fragile child."
"My mom used to cry a lot because she used to be scared that I would fall asleep and die of an asthma attack," she says. Cardi's chronic asthma could see her hospitalized for two-week stretches. At home, the nebulizer machine that opened her lungs also gave her tremors. "People used to tell my mom, 'She's not going to make it.' " This makes Cardi laugh, which, by the way, is rare. She's earnest in person—neither warm nor hostile, just serious. Off-camera, one-on-one, she's not a riffer and she's not a ham. She's relentlessly funny in conversation but doesn't acknowledge her humor or wait for a response to it. Her speech is free of the tic-like bursts of exuberant birdsong that give her TV appearances a madcap air.
