Cardi B is back with new music, less than seven months after her debut album, Invasion Of Privacy landed with the force of an atomic bomb. Her new single, “Money,” is out now and it looks like she’s coming to break necks and take checks in the back half of 2018. She may have promised to drop the track on Thursday on Instagram, but it seems she just couldn’t wait to get back to the cash.
The beat is more menacing than anything we’ve heard from her this year, with a snaky snare line over a threatening, angry piano loop that sets aside fanciful bells and whistles for straightforward, mean mug-inducing aggression. Cardi’s bars are as confident as they’ve ever been: “All y’all bitches in trouble, I bring brass knuckles to the scuffle / I heard, ‘Cardi went pop,’ I did go pop — that’s me bursting they bubble.” Her demeanor here is a far cry from the soothing ASMR video she put out on a lark and far less sensitive than her more recent Invasion singles like “Ring” and “I Like It.”
Whether this newfound mean streak is a result of the increased hostilities between Cardi and Nicki Minaj remains to be seen but it looks like Cardi isn’t resting on her laurels after the birth of her baby Kulture. It looks like Cardi has taken up the Quality Control ethos of applying pressure year-round while the “money” keeps on rolling in.
