Lil's we need to talk is everything?
Okay, I'm not ready to let go of Cardi just yet.
Oh Gonnes sweat it because we have one more episode on the Bronx Queen.
That is the kind of uplift I need today. My howt Girls, Dummer Walks aren't cutting it anymore.
You know what, Joseph, I love that you're still in your glow up era like it's just so good on you. And on our final Cardi B episode, We've got all the juice on Cardi, a deep dive into her budding relationship with Joseph's homegirl, and a wind tour and another round of trivia Cardi B Edition.
Your Bitch want to Party with Cardi Al.
I'm your host, Liliana Oosquez and I'm Joseph Carrio And this is Becoming an Icon, a weekly podcast where we give you the rundown on how today's most famous latinv stars have shaped pop culture.
And given the world some extra level.
Sit back and get comfortable.
Because we are going in the only way we know how, with buenasunesas.
And a lot of opinions as we relive their greatest achievements on our journey to find out what makes them so iconic. Cardi B is our third icon and we didn't want to end our coverage without the help of our good friend Moises Mendez. He's a writer for Time covering Internet culture, movies, books, TV, podcast and of course musica.
But that's not all, lil We did some digging an unearthed that Mois says knows all the inside tea about our girl book, Cardi aka Cardi B.
Welcome to the show, Mois.
Says, I got thank you so much for having me back. I'm so excited to be here.
We're very excited to have you, and.
We are ready for all the tea.
Now, what can you tell us without unleashing the Bacardi army on you? Is the tea good? Is it piping? Is it cold? Like, give me a time, mature.
I'm not worried about as much of her fans as it is like my family, So I'm only going to tell you guys the amount that I can. Basically, my great grandmother had thirteen kids and she has a big house in back in my hometown.
And your hometown is where in.
Rothman County, New York, So it's like right across the Hudson from Westchester, And basically it's a big house.
It's like a four family house.
And when I was told was that when her family came from the recent public my great grandmother housed some of her family. So my godmother allegedly went to school with her aunt, so they know each other that way. And when my great grandmother passed away in twenty twenty one, she one of her aunts was at the funeral, Like it was very apparent that she was there. She was the only one in like a Chanel suit in sunnglasses.
So yeah, wow, yeah, did your family come from the dr and go to Rockland County and then her family as well.
It's like hard to explain because my great grandmother had thirteen kids, so this timeline is very long. So the older guys came here first, they bought this house and started moving people in, and my grandmother was one of those thirteen kids, brought my mom with her, and then my mom would go back to the yard met my dad, then they came over here. So it's like a whole lot of moving back and forth.
So basically she's kind of like a vesina, Yeah exactly, well not a Asina.
She like lived in your house? Did she live in your at my house?
I wasn't there, Like she lived in my great grandmother's house. I was not even a thought. This was, like I want to say, in the eighties. Ex I don't know exactly what her family came here, but I do have some sort of familial connection with her.
That's actually why you're the most perfect guest for this because you cover right all of this music. Also Internet culture so fine for our listeners. What internet culture means.
Well, it's kind of new in the journalism space, but mainly I cover like influencers, social media, all of the debauchery that happens online.
And basically Cardi B is the.
Most popular influencer there ever was and is like point blank period because when I think of influencers and when people are like talked about as influencers, are always just like gonna be an influencer, Like say someone like Emma Chamberlain, like she went to the Macala on her own, but she's still an influencer. Someone like Kim Kardashian is technically an influencer too, but she's still seen as a reality star.
And Cardi B was both of those things, but she managed to break those molds and become a respected.
Rap iconic, become iconic.
Yeah, and that's why we're talking about her, because she's icon.
And I love that you bring that up because you know, we spent so much time in our previous episodes really talking about how she started. And I think a lot of people think of her as a rapper, but like, if you go way way back to like the Vine days, if you go back to the early Instagram days, and I'm talking before love and hip hop, we're talking og Carter. Oh yeah, she used to have one hundred thousand followers and she thought she was a big deal then, right,
She's always had this like star attitude. And you know, aside from just having this massive online presence, I mean, party goes, like you said, beyond that, she's a massive inspiration to so many young black and Latina females and males and all of us.
And the gays and the gays. You can't forget the gays.
Come on, hello, look at my beautiful co hosts. How can I forget the gaze? And like, my beautiful guest, are you kidding? But what we do is spend a lot of time off the air talking about what make someone an icon. And one of the words that we often use in these discussions is change maker. And I was doing a lot of thinking in regards to this particular word, and I wanted to kind of say that word to you because I think it's a perfect way
to describe her. She's a change maker, at least to me in the music industry and for and I want you, Moses to kind of address how she's a change maker. Let's start with music, because that's what you're passionate about. So what we're passionate about is what our listeners love. So why do you consider her a music industry change maker?
Well, when you think about like her transition from being a social media star to like releasing her own mixtapes. She did Gangster Bitch Music Volume one, which has some fantastic songs on it. I love that one song Forever, which is like basically a play on the meme where she was on love and hip hop. She said a bitch cuppy for me to go have you forever, Like
that was just perfect. So she used like that comedy that she's known for, infused that in her music, and then used that later again in her second mixtape, gangs to this music Volume two and also like the rumors around, like it's so funny and it's so like the Bronx, Like that's just exactly what I would expect a woman
from the Bronx names her mixtape. But she also just uses the rumors around her a relationship with Cardi with Offset in that music because he was featured on a song called Lick, and that sort of like set off these rumors even more and it caused all this conversation.
So then there was a lot of rumors and allegations going around, like on her come up before her debut album, Invasion of Privacy came out, and one of the allegations was that Offset cheated on her because there was this weird unethical leak that happened and someone like hacked into his phone and basically people were saying, oh, Carti's just one of us, like she's also gotten cheated on whatever whatever, And she made this I can't even describe how amazing
it is. Be careful. That song was like the best single she's ever released. And then she didn't directly say that it was about Offset, but every single in the song.
Yeah, like she just she just didn't name him.
She doesn't name him exactly, like she doesn't name him in the song, but it's just like I'm a bad ditch.
I know who I am, so you better be careful before you lose me.
And that in itself was just like the perfect way to like start her debut, rise to fame, like and use this on her album, which then she did Drip with Migos, she did Ring with Kailani. She did just so many great things in that album that is just like insane, and it won her Grammy.
Cardi B won the.
Best Rap Album at the Grandnees for the first time since Lauren Hill in nineteen ninety seven, which is just iconic.
I'm curious about Nicki Minaj was around before.
Her, and no I'm not comparing them or anything like that.
How was her sound different from Niki enough to get a Grammy? Is it because Nicki Mina started as pop and Cardi B came out the gate being gangster Rap Volume one, Volume two? Uh?
Yeah.
I think she was like a breath of fresh air in the rap game, especially for the female rap game. Like she came out as like a hard hitting like get up ten that is like her dreams and nightmares, like she was just like I'm a bad bitch, like you knocked me nine times when I get up ten, like I think, and people were kind of just don't come for me vines. But people were a little tired of Nicki, you know, doing Starships, which she claims to hate.
You know, that's not a good song. I hate that song.
But there were some good songs on Pink Friday, Roman reloaded, But you know, I think people wanted something new and they wanted something harder. And that's when Carti came in, and she kind of of like open the door for a lot of these other female rappers that are now popular and she's worked with.
And I love that you bring that up because I think that we can't talk about Cardi B and not discuss that exact thing that you just described, which is like ses you know what I'm saying. She was not sugarcoating her lyrics. She was not toning it down to feel more feminine or try to recruit a female rap audience. She was a rapper. There was no gender in front of that. She wasn't a female rapper. She was a rapper.
And in addition to just being a rapper, one of the things that I love so much about her music is that she fully owned her sexuality and encouraged other women to take power in expressing their desires and their wants and their needs about sex. The rap game has been one sided for so long. It's just men talking about sex and in a way that doesn't necessarily feel
good to me as a female listener. Carti b flipped that script and said no, no, no, no, no no, Like, we are the ones that own that power, and you see that in her lyrics, and to me, that's what makes her a change maker in the music industry. Like she to me, is one of the first and now like everybody does it, thank God, right, But it took her doing it because I think her roots as a stripper, she had a comfort with that sexuality that I think a lot of women maybe didn't have that because they
didn't come up the way that Carti came up. And without Carti's come up, you don't have Carti's lyrics. We've touched on how Carti is a music industry change maker. Let's talk about how she's a Olguda change maker. How do you feel she plays into that, especially for after latinos and Latinos in general.
I think before Carti, there wasn't anyone that was like loud and proud about being after Latina. We did have Amada La Nega talk about it, but someone like Cardi b She just like is just unabashed about who she is and where she comes from and what she raised her and what influenced her and all that. And she puts that into her music, which is why she did that collab with that bunny J Balvin, one of her
biggest songs ever. But when it comes to someone like Carti, like talking about being after Latina, having a Dominican father, having a trainy mom, like, it's not something that we see a lot, and especially like as like a Dominican person myself, like, I am so happy to see someone like repping my country, you know, and I never really get to see this. So every time someone's Dominican and I'm like, oh, I got to ride hard for you.
So I can imagine like a lot of other people are also seeing this and going, oh.
Great, we have a Dominican, Yes, like let's go I totally.
I think centuring her identity and that authenticity that comes from that centering has been so so powerful for all Latinos right, just to talk about what is happening with after Latini that in our culture. These are conversations that I don't know I was having in my family or if the conversations that I was having that is some racist shit that was happening around the table when I
was growing up. But now I think our generation is having much bigger, more open conversations and necessary conversations to talk about Afro Latinidad. I'm Puerto Rican, like my dad like didn't talk about this stuff. So I think for me, like culturally, she has been pivotal in acceptance of what this means and how proud we should be of Afro Latinos.
Yeah, and I think she knows so in one way or another, helped move the conversation forward around the difference between Hispanic and LATINX, because some people don't like the term LATINX, which I'm just like, it's a gender inclusive term, so I don't understand why I don't like it. But I like to use LATINV because that translates better in Spanish and I kind of like get all of my
colleagues to also use Latin. But you know, I think that's also fine, but you know, people always still want to call themselves Hispanic, and I'm like, Pave, if you're from a Latin country, you are not Histandic. It's just as simple as that you come from Latin America, you're lying.
That's it.
That is a whole nother episode of becoming an eye God.
So, speaking of the Bronx, so far, we've done episodes on both j Loo and now Carti as icons.
They have so many similarities.
But j Loo back in the day, people were really hard on her for her sexuality, for her showing that ass, like basically people were chasing her down, and Carti literally comes out and she doesn't get any shit for it. Why do you think everyone is more accepting of her? What do you think the difference is?
Then?
Oh well, I think in the early two thousands, people did not know how to talk about women.
Just like in general, everyone kind of sucked.
I think when you know, look at someone like Britney Spears and the way that she was treated that was just heartbreaking. I think also in general, I think also with Jennifer Lowe, because people just did not know what to say about women. So I think now we've sort of understood, like we should treat celebrities as people because they're just like us and they have feelings and they're not just ways for photographers to make money, for publishers
to make money, like whatever it is. I think there is more of an acceptance of sexuality and sexuality in music, but not everyone's like excited about that, and we've seen that in different ways.
I also feel like when you come out as a dancer like Jlo started, and they wear really tight clothes and all of that stuff, I don't think that they think of it as sexual. I think Cardi is definitely doing it more sexual as a different type of dancer than Jaylo was. But when Jayla was just giving us bikinis, we were just censored.
Get out of here, pearls.
With a piercing it's over, go to church.
So crazy.
I think what's interesting is even though Jlo went through so much more scrutiny coming up in the two thousands and has faced this her entire career, what's been amazing is to see her hold a handout for Carti. I mean, she asked her to be in Hustlers, right. They're both badass women, and I think that's so important because you know, for so many years, I feel like, specially with latinas, and I am one. So I'm going to say because I've seen it happen, you know, we come from scarcity.
We're like, ooh, there can only be one like musician, there can only be one Latina actress. And Jaylo was like, no, I'm making room for her as well, and like brought her up, asked her to be in the film together. And I think she's coming from abundance, not coming from this scarcity mindset hills our people. We've got to stop.
Yeah, And you know, I think there's two things with that, Like Jlo knows that Cardi b is it was a hot commodity at that moment, and because she has previous experience as a stripper, as an exotic dancer, you know, she was just like, there is an opportunity for us to not only show people like strippers are insanely athletic, the way that they use their bodies. Everybody's just like, oh, let me just you know, drop out of school and I'll become a stripper.
I'm like, can you throw your head legs over your head like that? Because that's insane?
Do not have the upper bodies for that. But you know, I think with that, she also knew that like Cardi, would also help make this film popular.
Because cash cash Exactly.
I think a lot of like these people who were popular in the early two thousands know that they need to have someone who's popular in this moment to help them continue on with their longevity throughout their career if they want to continue on.
Yes, we call that relevancy.
And who better than a latina exactly.
I mean, I didn't want to say relevant because if fast sounded harsh, but I say longevity.
Listen the times, it's we live in a different era. And I think, like Jlo's so smart, she's a b I mean, if we learned anything from six episodes of Becoming an Icon on Jayla, this woman is an enterprise. She is a global entrepreneur. She knows how to make money, she knows what her strengths her weaknesses are. She did a full swat analysis on that film, and she brought in Cardi b to fully attract like the young like social crowd, and good for her and good for both
of them, was an amazing opportunity for both of them. Speaking of some headlines, we have seen a lot of CARTI recently, we just saw her at the met Gala. She's been kind of this like Met Gala staple. Are you surprised that she's on Anna's invite list or are you like, well, speaking of relevancy, ooh, Anna.
Went to such an interesting person. I think she knows who Cardid is and she respects her. But the biggest thing that surprises me the most is that she hasn't put out a lot of content since her last album. Like we've gotten a couple of singles here and there, so I'm always just like I.
Said, she put out content, she put out and way well.
Yes, exactly that.
But I'm saying, as I knew, she grew two babies and she is not raising children. I'm thinking musically that she is. She hasn't done a lot since then her giving birth, and for her to be constantly invited means that she is popular when people love her and people want to see her so and she always gets invited, either with a designer or like Bianna herself.
So it's incredible. I mean, that's it is.
It's wild to me and.
The glow up yeah.
Yes, oh my god. Look when she was with Jeremy Scott for Heavenly Bodies. Oh my god.
Okay, So, speaking of Met Gala, Cardi has given us some show stopping moments on the steps, Moiss, what was your favorite Cardi b Met Gala?
Look?
Oh, I think it was the red feather. Look. That was like the burgundy Tom Brown. Yes, that's my favorite. Oh my god, that.
Was Tom Brown. And then Joseph, I have a feeling. I know.
I want you to tell me you.
Okay, let me analyze Joseph's brain calculating. He loves little dollars, he likes diamonds, he likes anything that sparkles. Honey, So I'm gonna go gilded age. Cardi in gold, Jeremy Scott.
You know you just know me, and this is why we're together now. Hello, I love it.
I could talk about Cardi fashion forever, but voices, I know we need to let you go. So before we let you go, we want to do a little fun game with you. You are so good at.
This, yes, no, I was so bad last time.
That's why we're saying you're good at it this time, so.
I can redeem myself.
Yes, of course, exactly.
We know.
Carti is a masterful lyricist, especially in those rap songs. But what she's really known for is her one liners and her catchphrase. She has said some outrageous shit, moys, is we want to know how much of this outrageous shit?
You know?
We are going to ask you if this is a real Cardi b phrase or if we just totally make this up? Okay?
Are you ready ready as I'll ever be?
Okay, I need Obama number right now now. Now, I know he's not a president, but I know he knows something. Is that real or is that made up?
It sounds like something that she would say and in the way that she would say it, so I want to say that it is real.
You got it?
Okay? Good?
I said that during like an Instagram live. I feel like when she goes on her when she goes on her political rants, Like I'm just like screen recording the whole things. I need to watch it back and slow it down to half speed later. Okay.
Oh I love how fast she talk? Do I watch everything on two x speed?
So all right?
Next one is the savicha Yo tried to kill me?
Hmmm. I want to say.
Fake, yeah, Moses, you're killing this game today.
Well, I'm not as confident, but.
Yes, okay, okay, Joseph, you want to read the next one?
Yeah? Ready?
Yeah, doesn't money make you warny?
Yeah? That's definitely Cardi?
Right, yeah, I don't even know that, but I just feel like I said it because I'm like, she's definitely said that.
She has not yet.
God would say it?
She will?
You will?
Okay, and then one more because I'm gonna let you redeem yourself on this one.
Okay.
Uh, the nerves are so bad, Maybe I need to start smoking weed. Wait did Joseph say that?
Yeah?
Sounds very Was that my line?
Is that a cardiphrase or did we make it up?
I think Cardi did say that.
She did.
Okay, we go one wrong this time You're back.
You're back, baby, you are back. I love it.
Okay.
Now we all know that Carty's famous name comes from buck Hardy. She also has a sister named Hennessy. So alcohol names are a theme. We wanted to know what would be your alcohol name?
Like a cocktail or like yeah.
Ooh, like would you be like Moscow Moyses.
Like s Liliana is tequila Lily and I'm Fireball Joe. Wait, I've coined myself fireball Joe because every time I've had like two or three vodksotas, I have shots of fireball and I don't know why. Oh my fireball Joe comes out and.
I couldnot do fireball shots no point in my life.
Okay, so give it to us. Moscow moyses. What are you?
What is your name?
I mean, I definitely love tequila, but I'll probably I want to give myself.
A cow moyses.
Yes, mes, cowboys es. Yeah, that's perfect, Mescal moyses. There you go, I'm mess cowboys ses.
So on that note, mescal voices. What do you think the future holds for Cardi.
B It depends on how she decides to go forward and the type of music that she decides to make, because I mean, we've seen that she can do some incredible things like a be Careful song or you know, a just a pop song like Up, which is an
insane TikTok banger. So I would love for her to like take a second to like think about what she wants to say, make some beautiful piece of art and release it out into the world and then people are gonna be like, Wow, look at how talented, cool and just amazing Cardi b is and then from there, let's see how what she does after that.
The world is her oyster, I mean her clam that's her clam Clamogla. Yes, well, boys, says thank you so much for being here. We love chatting all things internet culture and music with you. We hope you'll come back again.
You guys want me to thank you guys so much, and thank you guys for listening, reviewing, sharing, and supporting Becoming an Icon and stay tuned for our next icon.
Okay, so we've now done two icons in a row from the Bronx. Maybe we should head a little further south.
No, not too far though.
Okay, fine, let's head to the Heights, Yes, Washington Heights, where we'll be looking into the life of another icon, raised at the crossroads of his Caribbean heritage and the city of New York. We're diving into the inimitable career of none other than Lynn Manuel Miranda on the next Becoming an Icon. Becoming an Icon is presented by Sonodl and Iheart's Michael Gouda podcast Network. Listen to Becoming an Icon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast,