From Instagram to ‘Bodak Yellow,’ Cardi B Has Arrived

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The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news.

From a distance, it might seem that Cardi B’s ascent to the upper reaches of the charts has been rapid — her summer smash “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” currently sits at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, behind only Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.”

But Cardi B has been a cross-platform star for years now: first on Instagram, as a straight-talking, linguistically-free girl next door; and then on reality television, giving the New York edition of “Love & Hip Hop: New York” some needed attitude.

Music came after those things, and it took Cardi B some time to crack the code: She released two mixtapes before “Bodak Yellow” took off. But now she has her sights set beyond that, as evidenced by her ubiquity at New York Fashion Week this month.

On this week’s Popcast, Mr. Caramanica discusses the music of Cardi B with Joe Coscarelli, pop music reporter for The New York Times, and Rawiya Kameir, deputy editor of The Fader, who recently profiled Cardi B for the magazine’s cover; and talks about Cardi B’s emerging relationship with the fashion world with Joanna Nikas, a senior staff editor in the Styles department of The New York Times.

Email your questions, thoughts and ideas about what’s happening in pop music to popcast@nytimes.com.

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