Vogue Magazine (January, 2020) Cardi B Cover

Vogue Magazine (January, 2020) Cardi B Cover.

ALTHOUGH CARDI B COULD NEVER BE ACCUSED OF MINCING WORDS, it’s hard to imagine a Twitter rant as frank on the subject of fame and its discontents as her video for “Press,” the tense, defiant track she released in the spring of this year. In it, a steamy ménage à trois culminates in a gunshot, which in turn gives way to a defiantly glamorous perp walk, a police interrogation complicated by very high heels, a trial that ends in a bloodbath, and, for good measure, a prison-cell toilet-bowl drowning. “Press, press, press, press, press / Cardi don’t need more press,” she raps over a frantic beat. “Walk in, bulletproof vest. . . . Murder scene, Cardi made a mess.” She’s the antihero of this ambivalent revenge fantasy; as the bodies pile up, her tearful fans begin to look foolish, and the haters—the press, presumably?—are proven right.