45 Things You Didn’t Know About Cardi B

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.”

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.

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]."

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.

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.

Cardi B garnered the Bacardi nickname due to the fact that her parents named her sister Hennessy, like the brandy.

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.

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.

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.”

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.'"

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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?"

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.

“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.

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.