What is a Cardi B? Wikipedia defines a Cardi B as an “American Rapper” and a “Instagram Celebrity” thanks to her “no filter attitude”. Whereas my sister and fellow young adult defines her as “your second favourite cardigan”. I personally think it’s something that someone would call a Bacardi whilst trying to be cool and hip (note to self, start calling Bacardi Cardi B). I’m stuck, I wasn’t aware that being an ‘American Rapper’ led to an unfathomably large following. Off the top of my head I can think of 10 above average rappers who don’t have the following that she has acquired. ‘Instagram Celebrity’ should always come with the largest of all Steve Martin air quotes surrounding the term ‘celebrity’. It shouldn’t be a thing, ‘Instagram Celebrity’ sounds like a job title on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Yet somehow, she has 22 million followers on the platform and WHATEVER A CARDI B IS YET TO BECOME CLEARER TO ME! Despite this she insists on infiltrating my personal life with mentions on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and an excessive amount of appearances on late night chat shows.
This perfectly illustrates my lack of understanding of youth culture at the moment (bloody youths), they seem to defy these social media personalities for “preaching” (insert preach emoji here). They seem to sit around in their cool trackies and tweet about what so and so said about so and so whilst talking to who gives a shit (sorry Grandparents). That reminds me how much I do hate “designer trackies” – which are just that, trackies. Back in my day trackies were something you wore to training, out for a kick-about or worn by those eight o’clock bus station drunks. Nowadays the lad culture has taken over everything, with gym wear such as Gymshark, SikSilk and 11 degrees being considered “fashion”, as in actual everyday and even going out clothes fashion. Don’t get me wrong, I like to show off the little muscle I have but my first port of call to show that off on a night out is seldom gym wear. I’m there to drink, not bench press. I don’t understand why that point must be made. And yes, my animosity towards that fashion may stem from me being a bit too middle class to pull off the word ‘Sik’ (which I swear we left back in the noughties), but nevertheless you’re in a club mate, get normal people clothes.
I am perfectly fine feeling too old at the age of twenty and I plan on accepting the stupidity of current popular music and fashionable fashion(?) not quite with open arms but I’ll sit back in Cardi A with a Sik glass of Cardi B and Coke and watch it go by.
Rhys Ash Powell 