Cardi B went from viral videos to a record-breaking run on the charts
In 2013 a young woman from the Bronx started posting short, loud, funny videos online. Four years later her first major-label single, Bodak Yellow, reached No. 1, making her the first woman rapper since Lauryn Hill in 1998 to top the Hot 100 with a solo song. Cardi B has kept rewriting chart history since.
She was born Belcalis Almánzar in 1992 in Manhattan's Washington Heights, to a Dominican father and a Trinidadian mother, and grew up in the South Bronx. Her stage name is a spin on Bacardi, the rum brand that had been her nickname; her younger sister is named Hennessy. After losing a grocery job in her teens she worked as a dancer, which she has said gave her a way out of poverty and an abusive relationship and let her go back to school.
Social media did the rest. Clips on Vine and Instagram built a following, and in 2015 she joined the reality series Love and Hip Hop: New York, where critics singled her out as the breakout star for her rapid-fire one-liners. She left after two seasons to concentrate on music, releasing a pair of mixtapes and signing with Atlantic Records early in 2017.
Bodak Yellow arrived that June and climbed for months before hitting the top in September, where it stayed three weeks. She became the first artist of Dominican descent to reach No. 1 in the chart's history since its 1958 launch, and the song was eventually certified diamond. Her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, came in 2018, and it made her the first solo woman to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album. Its single I Like It also reached No. 1, and Rolling Stone called it the best debut ever by a female rapper.
Her second album, Am I the Drama?, appeared in 2025, making her the only woman rapper whose first two albums both opened at No. 1. It gathered 18 charting songs, the most for any album in Hot 100 history, among them WAP, the only female rap collaboration to debut at the top. Her tally of five No. 1 singles is the most for any woman in rap, and Time named her one of the world's most influential people in 2018.
Source: Cardi B
