Belcalis Almanzar, aka Cardi B, is a mega-star with an inspirational success story. The 26-year-old Bronx-born rapper is not only staking her claim in the music industry, but she’s also beloved by her millions of social media followers for her “no filter” commentary, making her one of the most entertaining and relatable A-listers of the moment. The “Bodak Yellow” singer’s life is full of fun facts along with a fascinating career trajectory: she hustled her way from an Amish Market in Manhattan to a strip club before starring on VH1’s Love & Hip Hop and ending up at the throne of the Billboard Top 100. Ahead, a deep dive into her past with 40 facts you probably don’t know—but want to—about how Cardi B truly “makes money moves.”
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Her real name is Belcalis Almanzar.
Although we know her as Cardi B, true fans know that the musician has a much longer moniker: Belcalis Almanzar. Both names are Spanish translations of Arabic words. Belcalis is thought to be a reference to the Queen of Sheba, while Almanzar—from the Arabic “al mandhar”— apparently translates to “lookout point” or “watchtower.”
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Her mom is from Trinidad and her dad hails from the Dominican Republic.
The rapper’s mother and father come from Trinidad and the Dominican Republic, respectively. Being raised by two working parents in Highbridge, South Bronx—a predominantly Latino neighborhood—Cardi B grew up surrounded by multicultural influences.
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She was born and raised in the South Bronx—and is proud of her roots.
Like many Bronx-born rappers, Cardi B is proud of her hood and credits her upbringing for her success as a rapper. “It’s a great experience,” she told AM New York of her life growing up in the South Bronx. “I wouldn’t be able to rap about the things that I rap about now [if I hadn’t grown up there].”
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She doesn’t have a driver’s license.
Although Cardi flaunted her new set of wheels on social media, she admitted she doesn’t have a license or know how to drive.
“I don’t even have a f*cking license,” the rapper said in an Instagram-live selfie after she bought herself a car. “How do you expect me to know how to drive when I’ve taken the train my whole life?” City kids can relate.
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Her nickname Cardi B is short for Bacardi.
But the famed Cardi B stage name didn’t actually originate from the rapper’s birth name, Belcalis Almanzar. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Cardi B explained that her title is actually short for Bacardi (the rum).
“My sister’s name is Hennessy,” Cardi B explained to the talk show host. “So everyone used to call me Bacardi, and I started calling myself Bacardi,” which eventually was shorted to Cardi B.
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Fittingly, she has a sister named Hennessy.
Cardi B garnered the Bacardi nickname due to the fact that her parents named her sister Hennessy, like the brandy.
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And Hennesy is a low-key social media star.
There’s not just one star in the family. Hennessy has built up her own social media following, garnering 5.5 million Instagram followers and an avid fan base.

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Back in the day, Cardi B worked as a cashier at an Amish Market.
One thing many people don’t know about Cardi B: as a teenager, she worked the cash register at an Amish Market in TriBeCa, on a salary of $250/week.
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Then, she briefly worked as a stripper—per her market manager’s suggestion.
The rapper was fired from her position at the Manhattan deli when she was nineteen, and her manager suggested she try a different career path. “He was like, ‘You’re so pretty, you got a nice body,’” Cardi told Fader. “He told me to go across the street to New York Dolls, the strip club. That’s when I started stripping.”
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But she told her mom she was babysitting to pay the bills.
In an interview with Khloé Kardashian in 2016, the rapper talked about how she lied to her mom and said she was babysitting to make money, when she was actually stripping.
“I said: ‘Mom, these white people are so rich, and they just want me to take care of their kids,” Cardi B recalled. “‘They’re like eight and nine and I help them with their homework, and they pay me like $100 a day.’ And she was like: ‘Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.’”
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And she credits stripping for “saving her” from an abusive relationship.
On why she started stripping, Cardi B said it was a way to get out of an abusive relationship. “I was living with my boyfriend who was beating my ass,” she explained in a 2016 interview with VLAD TV. “Stripping gave me my own money to leave him.”
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Cardi invested the money she made stripping to get her rapping career off the ground.
Cardi B saved up the money she made as a stripper in hopes that she’d eventually save up enough to invest money in her music career and make her own mixtape.
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She got plastic surgery when she was just 19 years old.
On social media, Cardi B has spoken candidly about the hate she’s received for having cosmetic procedures done in the past. The rapper admitted that she had her first surgeries done in the hope that she would make more money as a nineteen-year-old dancer.
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Her butt implants could have killed her.
One of the first procedures Cardi had done was butt implants. The rapper paid $800 to get her buttocks illegally injected with silicone, and it came with some nasty side effects.
“It was the craziest pain ever,” she told GQ. “I felt like I was gonna pass out. I felt a little dizzy. And it leaks for, like, five days.”
Cardi planned to go back for touch-ups, but then she found out that the woman had her operation shut down after someone died from one of her procedures.
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She was on VH1’s ‘Love & Hip Hop.’
Cardi joined Love & Hip Hop’s New York cast for season 6. The rapper left the reality show after two seasons to focus all her attention on music. And within months of leaving the small screen, things took off for the musician: she released her second mixtape, signed a multimillion-dollar record deal, then released “Bodak Yellow.”
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Where she famously threw a (red bottom) shoe at a castmate.
Arguably the most dramatic moment from her stint on Love & Hip Hop, Cardi B threw a Louboutin heel at a cast member during the 2017 reunion episode, which escalated into an all-out televised brawl.
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Cardi B is humbled by her social media following.
Even before she made it musically or became a reality tv show star, Cardi B was climbing the ranks of social media celebrity. Because of her “humungous” personality and “stream-of-consciousness genius,” Cardi amassed thousands of followers on social media. But when asked how it makes her feel to have such a large community behind her (51.5 million people on Instagram alone), the rapper told W: “Like, I can’t believe they love…me? What’s so great about me?”

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She was famous on Vine before she made it big.
Before Cardi B blew up for her hit single “Bodak Yellow,” she went viral for a different reason. She made a Vine showing off her outfit and said that despite the cold, she was “still lookin’ like a thotty because a hoe never gets cold.” The Vine racked up millions of views and became its own internet meme.

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The rapper made history with the success of “Bodak Yellow.”
“Bodak Yellow,” the rapper’s breakout major label debut single, was an instant success, soaring to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The hit was also historic, because the success made Cardi the first solo female rapper to have a number one hit since Lauryn Hill’s 1998 single “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and the fifth female rapper in history to have an album top the charts.
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Taylor Swift once sent her congratulatory flowers.
After the chart-topping success of “Bodak Yellow,” Cardi B received a huge bouquet of flowers from Taylor Swift, which the rapper posted on her Instagram, admitting she’s a big T Swift fan.
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Cardi B’s ‘Invasion of Privacy’ album mentions Beyoncé every twelve minutes.
Like most of us, Cardi B is clearly a huge Beyoncé admirer. And though she gives many female artists shout-outs in the album (Tina Turner, TLC, Rihanna), Beyoncé received four references throughout the 13-track album, which Bustle noted, calculates to a Bey mention every twelve minutes.
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Her all-time idol is Madonna.
Obviously a member of the Bey Hive, Cardi B actually strays further from her genre when it comes to her favorite musician: Madonna. “I met my real life IDOL Madonna,” the rapper wrote in an Instagram post. “I can’t even believe I performed at her event and it was the most meaningful performance ever,” she gushed.
“I grew up with my mom listening to Madonna for hours,” Cardi continued. “I performed ‘Material Girl’ freshman year in high school, listen to her on all my photo shoots to have super confidence and always mentioned her in my interviews. The best part about it is she was everything i thought she would be a liberal kickass feminist bitch. I’m so happy.”
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The first song she ever released was a remix of Shaggy’s “Boom Boom.”
A timeline of Cardi B’s music career shows that the first song the rapper released was a Reggae remix of Shaggy’s “Boom Boom,” featuring Popcaan, which dropped in 2015.
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Her first music video was for “Cheap Ass Weave.”
Later that year, Cardi B debuted her first music video for her single “Cheap Ass Weave.” The video featured the rapper getting her nails and hair done at a salon.
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She’s tight with the Kardashians.
Back when Khloé Kardashian had her TV show, Kocktails with Khloé, Cardi B was asked to guest star, entertaining the live studio audience with a super-candid interview.
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Her dentist said “business has tripled” after Cardi B gave her a lyrical shout-out.
The rapper has openly admitted to having her teeth fixed, both in interviews and in her lyrics. TMZ reported that after Cardi’s dental shout-out in “Bodak Yellow,” rapping, “Got a bag and fixed my teeth,” had her dentist’s phone ringing off the hook. “People actually wonder: ‘Who is Cardi B’s dentist?’” the doctor explained, adding that business tripled following the release of the single.
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She’s a fast food fangirl.
On her Instagram, Cardi B posted a video documenting her love for McDonald’s and her pure excitement after receiving a gift card to the golden arches fast food joint. “Imma buy a hunned chicken nuggets, bro,” the rapper told her fans.
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She met Bruno Mars and they immediately decided to record “Finesse.”
The rapper’s recent killer collaboration with Bruno Mars on the “Finesse” remix actually was not at all planned in advance. The two musicians met after one of the “24k Magic” singer’s shows, when they decided to work together and began recording that same night. Mars even shared a photo of the pair on his Instagram with the caption: “I met Cardi B at 3 am after my show in LA backstage where we recorded her verse for Finesse. She walked in the room and she was everything I’d hope she’d be. Never change Cardi!”
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It takes three hours to get her nails on-point.
Deemed the “Queen of Bling,” manicurist Jenny Bui gives Cardi B her infamous talon nails. Best known as Cardi’s go-to gal, Bui has been doing nails for more than 20 years, building a huge Instagram following and loyal customers at her Bronx and Harlem spa locations. Not for the faint of heart, WWD reports that Cardi’s bedazzled nails take about three hours to perfect.
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She’s “obsessed with presidents.”
In a recent interview with GQ, Cardi B admitted she enjoys studying the structure of the American government. “I love political science,” the rapper told the magazine. “I love government. I’m obsessed with presidents. I’m obsessed to know how the system works.”
Getting fired up about the legacy of the late president Franklin D. Rosevelt, Cardi continued: “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.”
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She’s a big fan of Bernie Sanders.
Cardi B has been vocal about her support for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. In August 2019, the rapper actually sat down to interview the presidential candidate.
The interview took place at a very fitting location—a nail salon—and covered topics like health care and police brutality. They both encouraged viewers to register to vote and participate in politics.
“We have this bully as a president, and the only way to take him out is somebody winning,” Cardi said.
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The ‘Invasion of Privacy’ album title was born out of the rapper’s, quite literal, lack of privacy.
“When I was doing my album these past couple of months, my privacy has been invaded the most,” Cardi told Sway on his Sirius XM radio show. “I feel like I give people a lot and people still want more,” she explained. “When it comes to my pregnancy, I had people harassing me, stalking me. If it’s not something about me, it’s something about my man.”
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“I Like It” wasn’t meant to be a hit.
When Cardi released her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, in April 2018, the song “I Like It” became an instant chart-topper. But its success surprised Cardi, who thought a different song would be the breakout hit.

 

“I thought that ‘Be Careful’ was going to be my biggest hit record because I felt like every woman can relate to the record,” she said.

But “Be Careful” wasn’t not a success—it still went double platinum.

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She wasn’t into Offset at first.
It took some time for Cardi to warm up to her now-husband, Offset. The rapper pursued her for awhile, but Cardi thought he was only interested in sex. Eventually, she gave him a chance, and the two started dating in 2017.
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Her daughter’s name is a tribute to Offset.
Cardi gave birth to her daughter, Kulture Kiari, in July 2018. When choosing her first and middle name, Cardi decided to pay tribute to Offset. Kulture is likely a nod to his rap group’s albums, Culture and Culture II, and Kiari is Offset’s real first name.

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She got recruited by J.Lo to be in ‘Husters.’
When Jennifer Lopez was struggling to learn how to pole dance for Hustlers, she knew exactly who to call.
She hit up Cardi and told her, “You have to be in this movie. You know this world. You could teach us.”
Cardi agreed to join the cast, and according to J.Lo, she was a total natural.
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She’s obsessed with fashion.
Cardi B might be best known for her music, but she also loves fashion. Her outlandish looks have caught the attention of some of the world’s biggest fashion houses, and you can often find her attending runway shows for Chanel, Thom Browne, and more.

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Her ring is worth a pretty penny.
Who could forget when Offset proposed to Cardi live on stage at a Power 99’s 2017 Powerhouse concert? As he got down on one knee, he revealed the ring, an 8-carat, pear-shaped diamond. The custom piece also features a halo of pink diamonds, which puts the estimated cost at a whopping $550,000.

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For the record, she’s setting records.
Cardi is making music history, and she has the stats to prove it. She dethroned Beyoncé twice—first for having 13 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the record holder for most simultaneous Billboard U.S. Hot 100 entries by a woman, and second for having the most simultaneous Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Hot 10 entries with five songs.

Cardi also set the record for most first-week plays for a female artist on Apple Music, surpassing Taylor Swift with 100 million streams.
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She’s making plenty of money moves.
Thanks to her platinum records, concert ticket sales, merch, and sponsorships, Cardi’s racked up millions on millions. Celebrity Net Worth estimates her total net worth to be $24 million.
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Her daughter has some famous playmates.
In February 2020, Cardi B and her daughter, Kulture, attended StormiWorld to celebrate Stormi Webster’s birthday. On Instagram, the rapper joked, “Kulture making some rich friends and eating all the foods.” We see a lip kit collab in Kulture’s future.
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She makes her own hair masks.
In June 2020, Cardi B took to her Instagram Stories and, according to Refinery29, revealed that she makes her own hair masks from natural ingredients. The singer explained, “I just finished putting argan oil, and I’m gonna put mayonnaise, castor oil, and olive oil. I know it’s a lot of oil, but my baby’s hair needs to be really hydrated like mine.”
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Her peacock tattoo had a makeover.
Cardi B has an unmistakeable peacock tattoo, and the singer decided to give her ink some TLC on its ten year anniversary. Sharing a before and after photo on Instagram, the singer wrote, “So after ten years I gave my peacock tattoo a makeover.This whole week I been takin hours of pain getting tatted . Thank you @jamie_schene.”
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She tried to trademark “okurrr.”
As reported by CNN, Cardi B applied to trademark the phrase “okurrr,” which she is known for. However, the application was sadly refused by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Her gifts are seriously lavish.
For Offset’s 28th birthday, Cardi B revealed on Instagram that she’d gifted her husband half a million dollars. Even better, she hid the money in the fridge and waited for his shocked expression upon finding it.