‘I can sing’: Cardi B thrills crowd in frustratingly short set at Flyover festival
The world’s most colorful pop star validated her elite status at the Flyover festival at Providence Medical Center Amphitheater on Saturday.
Cardi B thrilled 18,000 people in a frustratingly brief headlining performance at the nine-hour event in Bonner Springs.
Born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar in 1992, the New Yorker’s rise to fame is an enchanting American rags to riches story. She parlayed a career as an exotic dancer into rarefied celebrity. As she rapped on the biographical opening selection “Get Up 10,” she was once presented with “two options: stripping or lose … I was covered in dollars, now I’m covered in jewels.”
Cardi addressed her unusual career path during the frenetic “Drip,” posing the question “is she a stripper, a rapper or a singer?”
While she was slightly out of breath during a rendition of the 2018 hit, she earned the right to be tired. Often flanked by eight dancers during her 45-minute outing, Cardi wasn’t shy about executing racy dance moves. And unlike most of the other performers at the concert, she didn’t rap over unedited original tracks. After roaring with indignation on “Be Careful” she boasted “I can sing … I’m gonna put that in my resume.”
She’s also a gifted comedian. In a thick Bronx accent, Cardi joked about recent plastic surgery procedures like a foul-mouthed Dolly Parton.
The brevity of Cardi’s appearance was less amusing. She has only one album, but offering mere snippets of much of her best material was unnecessarily ungracious.
The hefty undercard of the third edition of Flyover partly compensated for Cardi’s terseness. 21 Savage, the Atlanta artist who endured a shocking immigration ordeal earlier this year, offered 40 menacing minutes of mumble rap. He threatened to “pull up at your momma’s house and put some rounds in it” in a chilling a cappella reading of “Red Opps.”
Lil Mosey was far less impressive. The defiantly dimwitted teenage rapper from Seattle responded to the audience’s indifference to his anemic performance by insisting that “I’m getting bored.”
The sentiment wasn’t mutual. A party raged throughout the outdoor venue even as Lil Mosey disappointed fans and when the unacknowledged cancelation of the fourth-billed G Herbo resulted in an hour-long lull that ended when the lurid Florida rapper Kodak Black hit the stage.
Visibly stunned by a massive roar of approval from the ecstatic throng, Black asked “what kind of party is this?” The answer is obvious for Midwestern devotees of rap and hip-hop: the Flyover festival remains the biggest and best celebration of the year.
Some fans posted photos and videos of the concert on Twitter.
Cardi B set list: Get Up 10; Back It Up; Money Bag; No Limit; She Bad; MotorSport; Money; Drip; Please Me; Girls Like You; Ring; Be Careful; Twerk; Thotiana; Taki Taki; Clout; I Like It; Bickenhead; Finesse; Bartier Cardi; Bodak Yellow
This story was originally published May 5, 2019 at 9:36 AM.