Cardi B Is Only Competing Against Herself for Stylish New ‘Billboard’ Cover

The rapper brought brilliance and boldness to her latest magazine feature.

Cardi B / Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images

Cardi B’s runway has never looked so clear.

The rapper is bringing couture and competition for her latest Billboard cover, as she faces off against herself in a game of chess while wearing gorgeous high-fashion ensembles. She is an absolute vision in an ornate, all-black dress with feathers and sparkles. Her clean-cut black bob elevates this look, bringing everything together to create a sickening cover image.

And it’s not just the cover image deserving of some applause, but the other photos in her feature, as well. Specifically, the one where Cardi B’s queen status is emphasized while wearing a jaw-dropping scarlet red dress.

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Her bold and beautiful piece begins with a turtleneck collar before elongating into those stunning pointed shoulder pads. The pads do well to create a unique silhouette at the top, but it’s the deep split on the side of Cardi B’s body that takes over the rest of this dress’s jaw-dropping aura. Add in the single-sleeve that fully covers her arm, and this easily becomes a look that exudes undeniable energy.

Cardi B has always been and will always be that girl. If there was ever any doubt about this, she’ll be the first to prove otherwise, as the Grammy Award-winning artist embraces her self-assuredness, knowing she has everything needed to back it up.

“I’m really one of those artists that people ask for their albums the most every year,” she told Billboard. “I wouldn’t be confident if nobody asked me for my s**t. Imagine nobody asking for an album of yours? Imagine nobody asking for your music? That’s why I’m so confident.”

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With her next album Am I the Drama? slated to arrive later this month, she’s giving her fans what they asked for. But her highly anticipated return didn’t come easy, as she desired to create tracks she could be proud of and felt reflected her evolved sound. While it might have taken her seven years post-Invasion of Privacy to do so, she finally landed on something that satisfied her ”picky” nature.

“I always knew that I was going to drop a second album, I just didn’t have a project well put together. My fans be like, ‘Oh, you should have put a project together when ‘WAP’ and ‘Up’ was out,’ but I only had four records that I liked. I didn’t have an album done around that time. I’m not the kind of person that’s going to lock in in two months and complete an album. I’m very picky with my music,” she shared.

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If you asked her past self, securing a Grammy Award would’ve been the way she believed her success could be measured. Now, she knows she’s struck gold when her biggest haters can’t deny that she’s released something special.

“Winning a Grammy, the most prestigious award, you can never take that from me. Everybody wants to downplay it, but everybody wants one. [But] times have changed,” Cardi B divulged. “Success for me will be people saying, ‘She put out a great album.’ If [at] 3 a.m. people are talking about the album, that’s going to be success for me because people can’t wait to downplay it. I even want the people who don’t like me to be like, ‘Yo. That s**t is fire.’”

It’s Cardi B versus Cardi B—and Cardi B is winning.

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