Cardi B is the working mother inspo we need right now
Love her or hate her, Cardi B’s career choices have flown in the face of the hip hop patriarchy and society at large when it comes to pregnancy and parenthood, writes Bianca O’Neill.
The devil works hard but Cardi B works harder.
Following her landmark Grammy win on Monday — she’s the first ever solo woman to take out the Best Rap album gong — it’s time we give Cardi B the recognition she deserves.
No, not as one of the most talented rappers of our time (although she is), but as an icon of modern working motherhood.
Let’s break down the year that led to her historic win.
Her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, was released in April last year.
Touted as “one of the most powerful debuts of this millennium” and “a hip-hop album that doesn’t sound like any of its temporal peers,” it was met with critical acclaim, debuted at No.1 in the US, and immediately broke sale, stream and download records.
She took out top spot as the first female artist to chart 13 entries simultaneously on the US Billboard Hot 100, and the album was the most streamed album by a female artist in a single week on Apple Music.
Only three days later, she announced she was pregnant with her first child on US TV show Saturday Night Live.
Much like New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern, Cardi B didn’t see her entrance to motherhood as a stumbling block to her aspirations — although she has now revealed many people told her that by becoming pregnant, she had ruined what chances she had of turning her initial success into a lasting career.
She toured the album while pregnant, danced with her bump on display onstage at Coachella, and sat through interview after interview to promote her hard work.
Unsurprisingly, her historic Grammys moment was met with criticism by some.
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In a series of now-deleted Instagram posts, the rapper posted a justification of her win, saying, “I f**king worked my ass off, locked myself in the studio for three months … didn’t go to sleep in my own bed, sometimes for four days straight, [while] pregnant.”
What some of these trolls can’t stand, of course, is that a woman who is also a mother, a former stripper and a reality TV star, has won a Grammy in a genre that has been dominated by men and misogyny for many decades.
Far from the usual rhetoric of booty girls, or “hos”, and bragging about sex acts with anonymous women, or tired wordplay on how rich these rappers have become, was Cardi B: pregnant and proud in her now five-times-platinum music video for I Like It, and gloriously baby-bumped on the cover of Rolling Stone with her husband. This is a woman who was successful, pregnant, and proud of it. A woman who hasn’t let motherhood stand in the way of her dreams.
Cardi B has done it all her own way; from begging the producers of the reality TV show Love and Hip Hop to give her a shot and take her seriously, to retaining her rough-around-the-edges charm well into her album’s success and feeling free to discuss complex political issues like the recent US government shutdown and Obamacare on social media.
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Love her or not, her choices have flown in the face of the hip hop patriarchy, and brought it crashing down. A pregnant woman featuring in a rap video that goes on to achieve five times platinum sales? It’s quite literally never been done before.
Whether it be the aforementioned Jacinda Ardern giving birth while holding the top office in New Zealand, Senator Larissa Waters breastfeeding her child in federal parliament, or Cardi B pregnant on the cover of a rock and roll magazine, one thing is clear: becoming a mother doesn’t mean the same thing that it used to anymore.
It’s a beautiful declaration that you needn’t change who you are; your dreams and your aspirations are safe to blossom no matter what your choices around motherhood may be.
And it’s an important message to men who wish to squash those hopes — in 2019, you’re destined to fail.
The idea people are saying Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy wasn’t deserving of a Best Rap album — an album on which EVERY SINGLE SONG went gold or higher, an album that has sold 34 million records in the US alone — is plain old misogynistic jealousy.
And if this is the new motherhood, then I’m all in.
Bianca O’Neill is a freelance writer. @biancaoneill_
Originally published as Cardi B is the working mother inspo we need right now
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