Cardi B’s Net Worth: Will Divorce Mean A Huge Money Problem?
Cardi B's net worth is reportedly around $80 million from music, movies, and even stripping.
DIVORCE NEGATIVELY IMPACTING NET WORTH?
Divorce never does anything good for anyone’s financial bottom line. And that’s likely the case here as well. Cardi B has filed for divorce from husband Offset for the second time. It’s another down point in a relationship that’s spanned seven-plus years.
And you read that right. This is the second time they’ve tried out divorce. This most recent filing, confirmed on July 31, 2024, comes after a series of ups and downs, including a previous divorce attempt in September 2020, which was later dismissed.
Cardi went out and said that the decision to end the marriage was not because of recent infidelity rumors but stemmed from just growing apart and ongoing arguments. She said she needed more positive relationships in her life.
How will it impact her financially? That remains to be seen.
For those of us looking outside, Cardi B is an acquired taste. Her rap music, while lyrical, doesn’t just push the lines of decency, it literally bludgeons it with a jackhammer. Her physical appearance is manufactured (which we’ll talk about in a bit), as has been her on-screen persona, but it has all been put together to help contribute to Cardi B’s net worth.
CARDI B’S NET WORTH IS ABOUT $80 MILLION
Let’s get this one out of the way quickly. Cardi B’s net worth sits at $80 million. Not bad for a girl born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar Cephus on October 11, 1992, in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York.
Cardi B’s father is Dominican, speaking to her only and always in Spanish, while her mother is from Trinidad, and also comes from Spanish descent. The credit, according to Cardi B, for her very thick accent, goes to her paternal grandmother, whose home Cardi B spent a major amount of time at while she was growing up in Highbridge in the South Bronx.
Cardi B claims she got her stage name from the rum brand, Bacardi, saying that was once her nickname. She just took Bacardi and flipped it around. “My sister’s name is Hennessy. You know what I’m saying? My sister name is Hennessy.” Cardi B explained to Jimmy Fallon with her heavily accented vernacular.
“So everybody used to call me Bacardi. So I always call myself Bacardi, right? And then it was my Instagram name. Like Bacardi, BacardiB. But for some reason, my Instagram keep getting deleted and I think that it was Bacardi that had something to do with it. So, I just shortened it to Cardi B.”
SHE STARTED AS A STRIPPER
As a teen, Cardi B found work at an Amish deli in Tribeca, earning $250 a week. However, the job didn’t last long, and Cardi B was relieved of her duties after giving a co-worker a huge discount.
It was then suggested to her by one of the store managers that perhaps she should test out a new career path. “He was like, ‘You’re so pretty, you got a nice body,’” Cardi B explained to Fader. “He told me to go across the street to New York Dolls, the strip club. That’s when I started stripping.”
Cardi B was 19 when she began her career as a stripper and building her net worth. “I was working all week [at the market] and I still was making only, like, 250 fucking dollars.” Cardi B says that her very first shift at New York Dolls brought her $300 in 8 hours.
It was then that Cardi B realized that the strip clubs were an easy way to bring in some cash. She moved on to other, more lucrative, strip clubs and learned to become more confident in giving customers lap dances in a thong. While the money started rolling in, her lifestyle wasn’t something she promoted.
“Thoughts of your parents pop up in your head and it’s like, ‘Yo, this is so disgusting.’ And I hid it for like two years from my family, from everybody. You know what I told them? I told them I was babysitting for some real rich white people.”
So, she gave herself an out. She told herself that by the time she was 25, she would not be stripping. It was a goal she met by the age of 23.
CARDI B ADDRESSES A FAN WHO SAYS SHE IS ONLY WORTH $40 MILLION
When you are constantly in the spotlight like Cardi B, people (fans and non-fans) are going to talk, it is all part of the business. But when they talk, they best have their facts straight because Cardi B has no issue clapping back. Take, for instance, the fan who recently claimed Cardi B’s net worth was half of what Celebrity Net Worth reported.
The fan, addressing a December 2022 Cardi B tweet where she said, “We going through a recession…Merry Christmas,” responded with a GIF of a man shaking his head and the caption, “Says the rapper worth 40 million.” Cardi B didn’t take long to clap back.
“I’m worth more then that and guess what? If I don’t save, work and budget I could lose it too! What makes you think that no matter how much money you got you can’t lose it all if you don’t manage your money correctly. I too have bills, responsibilities and people I have to help.”
Yes, wealthy people have problems just as much as the non-wealthy.
CARDI B’S NET WORTH GREW WHEN HER BUTT GOT BIGGER
Sometimes, just by looking at Cardi B, you can’t help but think of comic book characters, just by her physical appearance. Well built up top and not shy about showing them off, she is also the owner of a highly illegal “fat ass.” Both assets, though, were key in helping Cardi B build her net worth.
“All right, here’s the thing,” says Cardi B about how her physical dimensions, most notably her backside, came to be. “When I was 21, I did not have enough meat on my body—if I was to get lipo, I wouldn’t have fat for my ass.”
By the time Cardi B realized what she needed to do to enhance her career, she had already been stripping for a few years. To Cardi, though, there were a couple of reasons why she began to want — no, need — that bigger posterior.
The first was that she caught her boyfriend, at the time, cheating on her with a female who “had a fat, big ass.” Secondly, of all her stripper friends, the ones who for some reason made the most money were the ones with the bigger butts, no matter how talented they were dancing.
To get that butt and a bump in her net worth, Cardi B went to a basement apartment in Queens, New York. There, for $800, a woman injected her with butt fillers. “They don’t numb your ass with anything,” she says. “It was the craziest pain ever. I felt like I was gonna pass out. I felt a little dizzy. And it leaks for, like, five days.”
Thankfully for Cardi B, she eventually was happy with the results because, before the illegal procedure, it is difficult to determine just how “fat” one’s butt will become.
Even though Cardi B was happy with the final results, she still had planned on returning to the woman for a touch-up. “But by the time I was gonna go get it, the lady got locked up ’cause she’s supposedly killed somebody. Well somebody died on her table.”
Cardi B’s assets led her to begin posting short video clips to her Instagram, which started to add to her popularity. At this point in time, she had not produced one ounce of music. Because of her postings, she grabbed a huge following on Instagram, which led to the next venture that contributed to Cardi B’s net worth.
SHE WENT FROM INSTAGRAM STAR TO VH1’S LOVE & HIP HOP: NEW YORK
Her physical dimensions notwithstanding, Cardi B also brought along her winning personality to the VH1 reality show, Love & Hip Hop: New York. It was this 2015 show that pushed her to new heights in terms of star power.
Typically, this show would bring in people who, in some way or another, were associated with the hip-hop scene. But Cardi B. still hadn’t made that jump. VH1 had no problem advertising her in any other way, as they said, “Firecracker and Instagram sensation Cardi B. leaps from the pages of IG to the small screen with a bang!”
She was even better than advertised. She became the series’ breakout star and really started moving up in the world when she was involved in one of the show’s best-loved video clips that showcased everything Cardi B.
In it, she says, quite loudly, to one of the show’s male contestants, “A girl have beef with me, she gonna have beef with me…” as she hits that famous pause, turning away from the camera before turning back oh-so-dramatically, “…foreva.”
Cha-ching. Cardi B ended up doing Love & Hip Hop: New York for two seasons before she announced that she would be pursuing a music career.
CARDI B HAS A THING FOR FDR
In an extremely revealing and personal 2018 interview with GQ, Cardi B shared a lot. Much of it detailed her life before Cardi B’s net worth took off and much of it detailed her life after.
But what really stood out about Cardi B in her interview is that she can be quite introspective and though at times (her on-screen persona) she may not appear to be the brightest bulb in the bunch, she actually is quite smart. You may not care for the music, you may plug your ears at the lyrics, but you must admit putting the lyrics together the way she has takes some sort of brilliance.
Take, for instance, Cardi B’s “thing” for our 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I love Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yes,” she tells GQ. “I love political science. I love government. I’m obsessed with presidents. I’m obsessed to know how the system works.”
Then, Cardi B impresses by going into her spiel about FDR. “First of all,” she continues, “he helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great—make America great again for real. He’s the real ‘Make America Great Again,’ because if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get Social Security.”
Was it FDR who started Social Security? “Yes. Yes, from the New Deal. It was a system to get us back from the world Depression—then, on top of that, while he was president there was a fucking war going on. World War II was going on. So all this shit going on in the United States, while recouping the country from an economic tragedy, making sure that America won the war—and his wife? I would say she was almost like Michelle Obama. She was such a good humanitarian, and we both got the same birthday, October 11th.”
So, there you have it. Cardi B drops some presidential knowledge. As they say, peel an onion …
CARDI B’S NET WORTH GREW WHEN HER MUSIC CAREER STARTED IN 2015
Cardi B’s music career officially began in November 2015, when she joined Jamaican dancehall singer Popcaan, on the remix of Jamaican reggae singer Shaggy’s tune, “Boom Boom.”
Her very first music video appearance came on the song “Cheap Ass Weave.” On March 7, 2016, Cardi B released her very first full-length musical project when the mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1 came out.
From that point on, it became style and substance that not only shot Cardi B to the top but also added to her immense net worth. Almost a year later, Cardi B would release her second musical project with Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 2, and awards would start to follow. Her star was rising and fast.
Cardi B’s single, “Bodak Yellow” was released in 2017 and immediately began to climb the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. On September 25, 2017, “Bodak Yellow” finally went to number one, making Cardi B the first female rapper to have a number-one hit since 1998.
Making her work even more impressive was that when she eventually released “No Limit” and “MotorSport” as singles, they joined “Bodak Yellow” in Billboard’s Top 10, making her the very first female rapper to have three songs in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100. She also accomplished this feat with these three songs on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
Since that time, Cardi B has grown her net worth by branching out. She continues to make music, including her number one studio album, Invasion of Privacy, which included “Bodak Yellow” and other hits like “Bartier Cardi,” “Be Careful,” and “Drip.” And, of course, there was the 2020 monster hit, “WAP,” which featured Cardi B rapping alongside Megan Thee Stallion.
SHE’S BEEN IN HUSTLERS AND FAST & FURIOUS
It hasn’t been all music and television that has brought Cardi B’s net worth to where it is at presently. She has also begun to find herself in feature films. In 2019, she got a part in the Jennifer Lopez film, Hustlers, playing a character named Diamond.
In 2021, Cardi B joined the Fast & Furious franchise when she was introduced as Leysa in F9 and will be returning to the franchise in 2023 when Fast X hits the big screen.
