By: Sandra Dickson Oyetayo
From the private jet that conveyed the 27-year-old Us rapper, Cardi B as she is popularly called, she began to melt hearts when she played the remix of Davido’s monster hit, ‘Fall’ and twerked on it. People’s head, as well as their hearts, went wild in joy. And Immediately Cardi B arrived in Lagos on Friday, December 6, 2019, she began to steal hearts. From her airport entrance with a broken nail and a typically Nigerian girl next door dress she came dressed in, we knew she was going to love her time here in Nigeria.
She came prepared. Nigeria and the 27-year-old US rapper have a lot in common. Nigerians are industrious. So is Cardi B. Both Cardi and the country were founded on a bedrock of hustling. She possesses the sturdiness, resilience, unapologetic, and the never-say-die spirit of a typical Nigerian. So it was like a walk in the park for her to identify and blend in.
Born as Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar to immigrant parents in Manhattan, Cardi B has had her path sewn from the bottom to the top. Despite all her struggles, not once did she allow life to stop her. Nigerians recognize and celebrate this resilience spirit. We are all about the hustle and getting ours.
The first video she made upon her arrival on Instagram from the view of her hotel room, that got Nigerians more endeared to her than before; she declared excitedly, “Mehn we are in Nigeria, yeah, no lies, this looks like the Dominican Republic, this looks like DR straight up.” A few moments later, she complained of the boogie service she was bombarded with at her lodge, she says: “I don’t want to eat hotel food, I want to see the real Nigeria. Take me to the ghetto. I want to eat, like, real Nigerian food. I want to eat all that fish, all that Jollof rice…”
She was later seen at a popular supermarket in Lagos, shopping in hundreds of thousands of naira for groceries, which she took to an orphanage home. At the orphanage, she mingled with the orphaned kids and the staff there. And later in the evening, she was at a club with a bottle of Guinness and rocking the dancers like no man’s business.
She even bluntly shunned Davido’s gift of expensive champagne and stuck to the common man’s choice; beer.
Cardi’s desire to have an unfiltered experience of the street culture instantly turned her into a national favorite.
When the day of the Cardi B’s debut concert in Lagos arrived. The whole country literarily showed up!
By 7 p.m., the concert street was already locked. There were gridlock of cars and humans, pushing for a chance to get closer to the action. Hawkers sold everything, with surprising speed and persuasive marketing. From food, water, blunt even a discounted bootleg ticket, as it hung from the pockets of street urchins.
It was a controlled madness: Women shaving past the bouncers, tickets elevated to gain entrance. People came from all classes and tribes, forfeiting cash, clearing their schedules, and booking their rides to catch a glimpse of Cardi. Not even Michael Jackson could have had such a rippled effect Cardi had on that day.
One woman described how she had to blackmail her bosom friend into procuring her the tickets, as she was dead broke herself and was desperate to attend the Cardi’s concert. Another says she leaned heavily on her boss at work for the show to become a reality, all for the love they have for her.
Cardi matched the enthusiastic energy of her Nigerian fans, with her first appearance dressed in the green-white-green colors of the national flag. A flag was draped over her mic stand. The women could not just stop shattering through recurrent scatterings of their excitements and all through the course of her performance, she made people, mean and women yell from their souls.
Cardi B came and offered love, reaffirmation, connection, resilience; she came and united with Nigerians in the global hustle that, Nigeria is the life!