Cardi B

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar Cephus born October 11, 1992), known professionally as **Cardi B**, is an American rapper. According to various media outlets, she is regarded as one of the most commercially successful female rappers of her generation. Born and raised in New York City, she first gained popularity through Vine and Instagram. From 2015 to early 2017, she appeared as a regular cast member on the VH1 reality television series *Love & Hip Hop: New York*, which depicted her pursuit of her music aspirations, and earned further recognition with the release of her two mixtapes: *Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1* (2016) and *Vol. 2* (2017).

Her first studio album, *Invasion of Privacy* (2018), debuted at number one on the *Billboard* 200 and was ranked the top female rap album of the 2010s by *Billboard*. Critically acclaimed, it made Cardi B the first female artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album as a solo artist, and marked the first female rap album in 15 years nominated for Album of the Year. It spawned two number-one singles on the *Billboard* Hot 100; with "Bodak Yellow", its lead single, Cardi B became the first female rapper to top the Hot 100 with a solo song in the 21st century and the first to achieve a diamond-certified song by the RIAA, while "I Like It" marked the first time a female rapper attained multiple number-one songs on the Hot 100. Her third Hot 100 number-one, the collaboration "Girls Like You" with band Maroon 5, made her the only female rapper to achieve multiple diamond-certified songs by the RIAA. She has since released two singles: "WAP" (featuring Megan Thee Stallion) in 2020 and "Up" in 2021, both of which topped the Hot 100 and other charts worldwide.

Recognized by *Forbes* as one of the most influential female rappers of all time, Cardi B holds various records among women in hip hop; she is the female rapper with the most number-one singles (five) on the *Billboard* Hot 100, the only to achieve multiple solo number ones and the only to earn number ones in two decades (2010s and 2020s) on the chart. She is also the female rapper with the most diamond-certified songs (three) by the RIAA, the highest-certified female rapper of all time on their Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, and has 100 million certified units (album and songs) sold in the US alone. Additionally, she is the female rapper with the most songs with a billion streams on Spotify—where she also has the most-streamed female rap album. She was the first lead artist to top the *Billboard* Global 200. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, eight *Billboard* Music Awards, six Guinness World Records, six American Music Awards, 14 BET Hip Hop Awards, and two ASCAP Songwriter of the Year awards. In 2018, *Time* magazine included her on its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2020, *Billboard* honored her as Woman of the Year. Outside of music, she became the creative director of entertainment magazine *Playboy* in 2022.

### Early Life

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar was born on October 11, 1992, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Her father Carlos is Dominican and her mother Clara is a Trinidadian of African and Spanish descent; Almánzar identifies as an Afro-Latina. Almánzar was raised in the Highbridge neighborhood of the South Bronx, and spent much time at her paternal grandmother's home in Washington Heights, which she credits with giving her "such a thick accent." Almánzar developed the stage name "Cardi B" as a derivation of Bacardi, a rum brand that was formerly her nickname. She has a younger sister, Hennessy Carolina, who was born in 1995. She has said she was a gang member with the Bloods in her youth, since age 16, but stated she would not encourage joining a gang. She attended Renaissance High School for Musical Theater & Technology, a vocational high school on the Herbert H. Lehman High School campus.

During her teens, Cardi B was employed at an Amish deli in Tribeca. She was fired and became a dancer at a strip club across the street. Cardi B has said that becoming a stripper was positive for her life in many ways: "It really saved me from a lot of things. When I started stripping I went back to school." She stated that she became a stripper to escape poverty and domestic violence, having been in an abusive relationship at the time after being kicked out of her mother's house, and that stripping was her only way to earn enough money to escape the situation and get an education. She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College before eventually dropping out. While stripping, Cardi B lied to her mother by telling her she was making money by babysitting.

In 2013, she began to gain publicity due to several of her videos spreading on social media, on Vine and her Instagram page.