Cardi B (American rapper)

Belcalis Marlenis Cephus (née Almánzar; born October 11, 1992), known professionally as Cardi B, is an American rapper. Noted for her unfiltered public image and lyrics, Cardi B is one of the most successful female artists in contemporary music. From 2015 to early 2017, she gained recognition on Vine and Instagram, as a cast member on VH1's Love & Hip Hop: New York, and by releasing two mixtapes.

Her first studio album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), debuted atop the Billboard 200 with the largest female rap album streaming week of all time, and Billboard later ranked it the top female rap album of the 2010s. Critically acclaimed, it made Cardi B the only solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, and Rolling Stone ranked it the best debut album of all time by a female rapper. Its singles "Bodak Yellow" and "I Like It" both topped the Billboard Hot 100 and were certified diamond by the RIAA; the former made Cardi B the first female rapper to top the Hot 100 with a solo song in the 21st century and the first to achieve a diamond-certified song, while the latter made her the first with multiple number-one songs. Her third US number-one, the collaboration "Girls Like You" (2018) with Maroon 5, made her the first female rapper to earn multiple RIAA diamond-certified songs. She released "WAP" (with Megan Thee Stallion) in 2020 and "Up" in 2021, both of which topped the Hot 100 and other charts worldwide. "WAP" is the only female rap collaboration to debut atop the Hot 100, made Cardi B the first lead artist to top the Billboard Global 200, and had a large cultural impact.

Cardi B holds various records among women in hip hop; she is the female rapper with the most number-one singles (five) on the Billboard Hot 100, the only female rapper to achieve multiple solo number-ones, and the only to earn number-one singles in two decades (2010s and 2020s). She further is the highest-certified (digital singles) female rapper of all time in the US, the first female rapper to earn at least three diamond-certified songs by the RIAA, and has over 100 million RIAA-certified units sold in the US. Additionally, Invasion of Privacy is the most-streamed female rap album on Apple Music and Spotify. She has won a Grammy Award, the most Billboard Music Awards (8), Guinness World Records (6), BET Hip Hop Awards (14) and ASCAP Songwriter of the Year awards (2) among female rappers, six American Music Awards and four MTV Video Music Awards. Time listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018 and Billboard named her Woman of the Year in 2020.

Outside of music, Cardi B served as a judge on the music competition series Rhythm + Flow (2019), appeared in the films Hustlers (2019) and F9 (2021), and had a voice role in Baby Shark's Big Movie! (2023). In 2022, she became the creative director of entertainment magazine Playboy.