by Brooklyn White-Grier
Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” has hit 1 billion views on YouTube.
We live in a time of random achievements holding weight in the digital realm. We celebrate 3-year anniversaries of albums and stats on video and streaming platforms. It’s different from parties for Grammy awards (though some major accomplishments, such as hitting 1B listens on Spotify do come with physical rewards), since they live online and are sometimes discovered by fans rather than institutions. They matter nonetheless and are marking how we think of music and the accolades that come with it.
Cardi B’s first major single was a shocker to some, but not to analysts. We saw her charisma, knack for social media and sincerity when it came to making her own music. A brief stint on Love & Hip-Hop: New York helped her career as well, giving her additional name recognition. What I believe mattered most was Americans’ love for rags to riches tales and the thirst for relatability.
Social media has lifted the veil in the sense that we’re often privy to the inner workings of celebrities’ lives. At best, we get glimpses into the creative process, selfies (or well-produced shoots that could be exclusive images for magazines), and teasers of new work. At worst, we get hateful rants and heavy doses of TMI. With Cardi, we got to see the most honest aspects of her journey and all of its twists and turns. So of course, her song about sex work, a Christian Louboutin glass slipper and a new smile performed well. We tend to thrive on the come up of others, running up their numbers in process. Because CDs are dead, right?
“Bodak Yellow” is a fun little doozy because it’s made waves in this new world of digital success and gotten thunderous applause in the old world, too. It was the first song by a woman in rap to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing),” proving that we were indeed in new era for women. The girls with fake hair and acrylics became mouthpieces and no longer relied on others to tell their stories or rebuke them. Much had changed in nearly 20 years---a new wave of Black feminism emerged. Behold the new eHeroines who stand on the shoulders of the originators.
Some of these awards from stan pages are bull, I think. Do we really care about XYZ being the first artist to release three songs this month? Should we really celebrate the 17th anniversary of a single? Maybe, maybe not. But times are changing fast. So we might as well be happy for every reason we can conjure up.