Cardi B Reflects on Early Days of Career With Throwback Promo Photos: ‘I Had a Dream’

Everyone starts somewhere. Now a Grammy-winning global sensation with five No. 1 singles to her name, Cardi B just shared a throwback to what she was doing about seven years ago: posing for some promo photos for her first mixtape, 2016’s Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1.

“My first mixtape promo photos ….I had a dream,” the rapper tweeted Wednesday (Dec. 28), captioning a trio of snaps taken leading up to the mixtape’s release.

In one of the photos, she pours a cup of detergent into a washing machine at a laundromat while wearing a black underwear set that shows off the majority of the signature peacock tattoo on her thigh. In another, she stands at a stove wearing a red bikini top and bandana in her blue hair, stirring a pot with her tongue sticking out.

“’I don’t cook I don’t clean’ back in the day when you cooked and cleaned,” joked one fan in the replies, referencing one of Cardi’s “WAP” lyrics.

Each of the photos is labelled with a reminder to pre-order her debut mixtape. Over a photo of the Bronx native posing on top of a graffitied blue mailbox reads the message, “Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 2 DAYS LEFT to pre-order. Free copy call 718.215.0159.”

Though Cardi has released two more mixtapes and a debut studio album since Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1, the mixtape was once again at the center of public focus this year. In October, the “Up” artist won a lawsuit filed against her by a man who claimed his rights were violated after his tattoos were Photoshopped onto the back of a male model on the cover of the mixtape.

The Gangsta Bitch promo photos aren’t the first time that Cardi has looked back fondly on past career moments. On Monday (Dec. 26), she retweeted a clip from her 2017 “Lick” music video featuring Offset, the Migos star whom she would marry later that year.

“I couldn’t even breath doing this video,” she wrote. “I was crushing hard on Set.”

See Cardi B’s throwback tweet below: