New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani turned to rapper Cardi B on Friday as his administration rolled out a public push for a new city childcare initiative aimed at two-year-olds, including a jingle contest tied to the upcoming launch.
Mamdani, who previously performed under the rap name Young Cardamom and contributed music to his mother Mira Nair’s 2016 film “Queen of Katwe,” announced on X:
The post featured a video in which Cardi B asked, “Can you believe that we got a 30 year old mayor?” Mamdani replied, “We do.”
“I feel like I’m a kid and you’re like, running you,” Cardi B added, to which Mamdani responded, “I’m right there.”
Asked by Mamdani what she thought about free childcare, Cardi B said: “I feel like free childcare is very important. Sometimes, us women, we can’t really go forward because we don’t have nobody to help us take care of our kids.”
Mamdani said:
This fall, we’re starting to deliver universal 2k which is just like pre K, just like 3k but 2k for two year olds, free childcare, 2000 seats in the fall, and they’re gonna be seats in the Bronx starting it up. Shout out to the BX. And enrollment actually starts in June. We’re gonna have a competition to create a jingle. So New Yorkers are gonna submit their best jingle, and we wanted to know who would help judge that competition?”
“Oh, I will judge it for sure,” Cardi B replied. “The mayor is going to help you and, and I’m gonna judge, and he’s gonna give cause he’s the one with the funds.”
Cardi B’s latest appearance with Mamdani follows several recent political efforts that ended unsuccessfully. In February, Cardi B endorsed Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Texas Democrat Senate primary, but Crockett went on to lose to state Rep. James Talarico. Cardi B also endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election after previously backing Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in earlier presidential campaigns.
The rapper has also repeatedly drawn attention for threats and vulgar behavior. During a February concert in Palm Desert, Cardi B said she was prepared to mace and “jump” ICE agents if they came to her show.
After President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Cardi B posted and later deleted a video saying that Trump-voting states were why “some of y’all states be getting hurricanes.” The following day, she warned Trump supporters to “leave me the f*ck alone” before she would “start lighting y’all ass up.”
Cardi B, whose hit song WAP was named by National Public Radio as one of the best songs of 2020, later appeared in children’s programming in 2022 when she joined her husband Offset and daughter Kulture on the Baby Shark’s Big Show! episode “The Seaweed Sway.”
In 2023, she threw a microphone into a crowd at a concert in Las Vegas after a concertgoer threw liquid at her, leading to a battery investigation. Last year, Cardi B testified in a California civil case that she did not scratch or spit on a security guard during a 2018 argument outside a doctor’s office.
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