CARDI B ENGINEERED INSTAGRAM FAME INTO REALITY TV STARDOM INTO A POPPIN ’ RAP CAREER . NOW SHE ’ S LEARNING TO JUGGLE EVERYTHING THAT COMES WITH IT .
MONEY MOVES
BY : RAWIYA KAMEIR To put it in her own indelicate words , Cardi B really has to take a shit . She ’ s curled up in the backseat of a black Denali that has been tasked with delivering us over the Hudson River , from midtown Manhattan to her apartment in Edgewater , New Jersey . It ’ s a 30-minute drive on a good day , but the rainy Monday afternoon traffic is moving too slow for Cardi ’ s lunch . The meal — her go-to Nobu trio of rock shrimp , an eel avocado roll , and ceviche , which she eats with the aid of chopstick helpers — is , she says , “ playing peek-a-boo with [ her ] asshole .” Laughing , she repeats the complaint a little more urgently , to the delight of our middle-aged driver , who seems curious about the big-mouthed , big-assed , big-boobed , red-haired girl who ’ s clearly the star of this ride and probably a star somewhere else , too . Cardi is decidedly un-puritanical when it comes to her body , and she prattles as matter-of-factly about her digestion as she does about the mosquitos that went to war on her legs in Dubai a couple of days ago (“ 17 million of them motherfuckers ”), the freedom of having her natural hair out today (“ I swear it felt like there was a roach up in there ”), and the imperceptible pooch she intends to remedy by erecting a stripper pole in her living room (“ Yo , I ’ m telling you , when I was dancing I used to have a sixpack , yo ”). The next day , at a style fitting for this story , she peels off a pair of leggings and bares her vagina to a room of strangers . Does she want a pair of panties ? “ Um … no .” It ’ s not quite that Cardi is unfiltered . There is very much a filter , actually , a strategic self-censoring that keeps private the things she doesn ’ t want to share . But when it comes to the mechanics of existing , and thriving , as a human being , she ’ s unashamed , unpolished , unapologetic — a stream-of-consciousness genius . That quality is what has landed Cardi precisely here : jetlagged in an UberBLACK , with a sleeveless , knee-length black-and-white fur on her body and a pair of fur-lined Gucci mules on her feet