Cardi B: Unfiltered, Unapologetic, Unbowed
By Rob Haskell
Photography by Annie Leibovitz
December 9, 2019

This month, Vogue celebrates four fearless creative forces, role models, and mothers with a quartet of covers.  
Cardi B
Michael Kors Collection dress. Cartier earring and rings. Tiffany &Co. bracelet. Jimmy Choo shoes. Hair, Tokyo Stylez; makeup, Hannah Murray. Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman.Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, January 2020
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.

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