What does ‘Bodak Yellow’ mean?
Cardi B is an enigma. Forget about the fact that she had an untraditional path into the hip-hop game, spending time as a stripper in New York before finding her true calling in rap music.
Forget about the fact that she admitted to drugging and stealing money from men that she said “wasted her time by falling asleep”, and then “kept coming back”. And forget about the fact that she identifies herself as catholic despite doing all of this. Her true enigmatic nature can be summed up in this short section of an Instagram live that she posted during the pandemic.
It is this enigmatic element of her character that makes her such an interesting artist. In 2015, she would join the cast of Love and Hip Hop: New York, a reality series chronicling the exploits of several up-and-coming artists in the hip-hop scene. Cardi, or Belcalis Marlenis Cephus, would be a star on the show due to her ability to rattle off one-liners.
Naturally, her music would be influenced by her personality. During her time on Love and Hip Hop, she produced two mix tapes, Gangsta Bitch Music Vol.1 in 2016 and Vol. 2 in 2017. Without even listening to the projects, the titles were a clear indicator that she was going to be an artist who went against the grain.
Her first studio album, Invasion of Privacy, released in 2018 is where things really took off. The album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard hot 200, and would go on to win the Grammy for best rap album of the year. The rapper from the Bronx is the only female solo artist to have won the award.
The two standout tracks from the album, the somewhat controversial ‘Bodak Yellow’ and ‘I Like It’, which features fellow Latin artists, Bad Bunny and J Balvin, cemented Cardi’s position as one of the premier female hip hop artists. Whilst the latter is straightforward in its interpretation (the title is right there in the chorus), the latter is slightly more esoteric, as the title is not mentioned once in the song. So what does Bodak Yellow mean?
So, what does ‘Bodak Yellow’ mean?
Before Invasion of Privacy was released, MTV News got the hot scoop by asking Cardi exactly what it meant: “I named it ‘Bodak Yellow’ because of the flow of the song. It will remind you of a song that Kodak Black did called ‘No Flockin’.”
“I called it ‘Bodak Yellow’,” the rapper confirmed, “you know, cos, my name starts with a B, you know what i’m saying, and yellow because, you know, I’m a yellow bitch, a yellow girl, you know what I’m saying, I’m yellow.”
As it turns out ‘Bodak Yellow’ is an indication of what Cardi B is all about. Her music puts her own spin on what has already been established. She is enigmatic in her approach to her art, whilst being unapologetically herself, which is exactly why she stands out.