Samuel Hadelman Photo
Cardi B with her fans at Toad’s.
Some fans found out about Cardi B through her Instagram (7.2 million followers) or Twitter (535,00 followers) feeds, others through the VH‑1 show Love & Hip-Hop, on which she famously threw a shoe at another contestant. Some love her comedy, others the actual rap compositions that she had come to Toad’s Place to perform.
Whatever the medium, the crowd at Toad’s cited similar reasons for turning out to see her this past Thursday night: The stripper-turned-recording artist and reality TV star’s honest personality. She speaks “facts.” She’s true to herself.
She seems to have built a fan base through a multi-platform strategy built on a single currency: authenticity.
“She was blunt. She was still proud of how she came up,” Daisy, one of the night’s opening performers, said of Cardi B, who grew up in tough circumstances in the Bronx in a family of Dominican/Trinidadian origin.
If the Toad’s crowd — the loudest I’ve ever heard at the club — was any indication, that fan base skews female. I saw maybe 10 males total all night. Backed by two dancers and a deejay, Cardi B and her “Gangsta Bitch” a capella freestyle connected with the women who spent the evening twerking away. She waded multiple times into the fan section and took selfies with the crowd. The crowd, many dressed in elaborate outfits that would fit into a Cardi B video, hit fever pitch when she performed her hit “Foreva.”
“She cuts deep,” said another fan named Rachel, citing a lyric to one of Cardi B’s songs: “I’ll sleep with your man on your birthday.”
“I think it’s cool,” said fan Alayna. “I like how she promoted herself well. She is a good businesswoman and did something on top of being a stripper.”
Cardi B’s sexual openness, the basis of much of her storytelling, has contributed to her developing a semi-cult-like following; she uses her past of being an exotic dancer not as a crutch, but as ammo in her arsenal. It’s the basis for most of her storytelling. If you don’t like her past, too bad.
Her fans see her as a face of sexual empowerment. One of her fans, Ashley, said that even with Cardi B’s newfound fame, she doesn’t use it as a “way to push other women down.”
With her new single, “Lick,” with her rumored boyfriend Offset, Cardi is seeking to add more of a mainstream audience to her fan base.
“She is carefree, honest, and blunt. Point blank, she is real,” said one fan named Alec. A local rapper, Big Mach, talked about how he likes her “based on her attitude towards everything” and the idea that she no longer needs to strip to pay the bills.
“I’m happy people are paying for her thoughts more than her body,” he said.