Little Miss Marketer: How Cardi B and Her Team Crafted a Historic Album and Tour Rollout
Cardi B’s Am I The Drama album rollout and Little Miss Drama Tour have been an absolute MASTERCLASS in marketing and positive brand alignment. As a longtime fan of hers, I have been absolutely overjoyed watching each aspect of it, but as a marketing professional? I am beyond impressed. And I’m not alone: Howard University announced this week that an upcoming course will be taught on her album’s rollout and its positionality within hip-hop.
Here are some of the key aspects that have made the past year so successful for Cardi and her team:
Owning narratives and reframing them instead of avoiding them
Over the past few years, Cardi had received significant criticism for both her personal life and the delays in releasing her sophomore album. Many people opined that the drama in her day-to-day life was distracting her from completing her project, while others wondered if she would be able to match the major worldwide success of her 2020/2021 smash hits “WAP” and “Up”. Instead of running away from those narratives though, Cardi leaned fully in, crafting an album and accompanying rollout that reframed people’s critiques as something positive.
Leaning into the social media prowess that made her a star to begin with and working with longtime friend and collaborator KenBarbie, Cardi posted videos promoting herself as a “single mother of three” who was relying on a successful album rollout in order to “buy Pampers”. Her skits included her selling her album alongside candy on the subway, jokingly revealing the “low” budget her label gave her, and even promoting it on the side of the street in New York.
She also flipped the script of her highly-publicized trial last year, turning the memes from her testimony into limited-edition covers of her album. With these moves, Cardi rode the wave of the critiques she’s faced rather than try and fight the current, and to great success: her album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 200,000 first-week sales, making her the first female rapper to achieve those feats with each of her first two albums.
Doing a full promotional blitz across multiple media/in-person platforms
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Far too often, artists’ rollouts rely almost entirely on a big social media push, while neglecting traditional forms of promotion that can attract wider audiences. While Cardi has certainly used social platforms to her advantage, she has also made multiple rounds on the television and interview circuit. She announced her fourth pregnancy in an interview with Gayle King, she revealed the dates for her tour on Jenna & Friends, and she teased her album in a Spotify interview with Kelly Rowland. She appeared on the covers of Billboard, Paper, and Gala magazines, she debuted Drama tracks in a live Apple Music interview, and she did a “Cardi Bodega” promotion with DoorDash that allowed users to have her album delivered right to their door along with snacks to eat while listening.
As if all of that weren’t enough, she also embarked on a nationwide tour of in-person activations, inviting fans to meet and take pictures with her for the mere price of one album. In January, she appeared as a guest judge on the season premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race — and in a move that few artists would think to do, she shared the platform with her longtime hair stylist Tokyo Stylez and makeup artist Erika La’Pearl, both of whom are trans women. She gave full credit to the dolls for keeping her at the forefront of beauty and fashion, an acknowledgement that resonated with viewers everywhere and reaffirmed Cardi’s status as a queer icon who truly cares about the community and puts money in their pockets, not just taking it out.
Emphasizing her leadership and collaboration as a girl’s girl
In a genre so often defined by competition, Cardi has always been intentional about supporting other women — the ones who came before her, her peers and contemporaries, and the up-and-comers. She continued this legacy with Am I The Drama, whose featured artists were almost entirely women. From new tracks with previous collaborators like Kehlani, Lizzo, and Summer Walker, to poppy songs with Selena Gomez and Tyla, to multiple songs sampling the legendary Janet Jackson, Cardi’s album is stacked with female influence and voices.
Additionally, Cardi has repeatedly shared her platforms with members of her team who have played key roles in her success. In addition to the aforementioned Rupaul’s Drag Race episode, Cardi also starred in a Yahoo commercial alongside her longtime manager and creative direction, Patientce Foster. And on her tour, she has invited a number of women to perform with her: GloRilla, Megan Thee Stallion, Tyla, Kash Doll, Natalie Nunn, and most notably, Lil’ Kim — a rap legend who inspired her and with whom she has always shared mutual love and admiration.
Cardi’s enduring success is proof that instead of chasing the latest marketing trends, sometimes the most impactful promotion comes from simply owning your truths, putting in the work, and not being afraid of winning alongside other people.
Salute the real one! 👏🏾🫡
