Given that she’s one of the biggest female rappers in the world, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Cardi B’s music videos tend to cost quite a fortune. Most recently, she stormed the charts with her hit single "WAP," with an accompanying music video costing the Grammy winner a whopping $1 million.
Cardi made the revelation earlier this month while opening up to fans on what have been some of the most expensive production costs on her visuals so far. "WAP" undoubtedly remains the biggest splurge she’s made for a music video, but there were other notable mentions which were reaching numbers around the same ballpark.
But what about her music video for 2019’s "Please Me" featuring Bruno Mars. The song, released back in February 2019, was another huge hit for the New York native, but wait until you hear how much she spent its cinematographic visual.
How Much Did Cardi B Spend On Her ‘Please Me’ Video?
When it comes to an artist like Cardi, who has sold over 31 million singles worldwide and won a Grammy for Best Rap Album with 2018’s Invasion of Privacy, it’s no surprise that her record label, Atlantic, is throwing a lot of money behind her.
When the “She Bad” hitmaker dropped her second single with Mars — the first being 2018’s “Finesse” — the assisted video is said to have cost Cardi around $900,000, she revealed to her fans via Twitter on January 13, 2020.
The track went on to sell over three million copies in the U.S. and peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It shifted another 200,000 units in the U.K., where it amassed its highest position at No. 12.
Needless to say, for the fact that the video cost almost a million dollars to make, Cardi and her record label would have definitely made that money back, on top of the profits that came with the skyrocketing sales.
She confirmed that the visual for "WAP" cost $1 million due to it being filmed in the midst of a pandemic, meaning everybody who was part of production had to be tested before entering the L.A. studio where the video was shot.
Back in August 2020, the “Drip” chart-topper also mentioned that she had spent an estimated $100,000 just so that she could get her team tested for COVID-19, assuring that nobody would be putting their health at risk while working on-set.
In an interview with i-D magazine, she gushed: "It was kind of weird shooting the video in the age of corona. Like, we had to spend $100,000 dollars just on testing. Everybody on the shoot had to get tested for coronavirus.”
She also revealed how the wild species seen in the “WAP” music video were not fake — but for safety reasons, neither her nor Megan Thee Stallion were allowed to actually shoot a standalone scene with them.
"We had a tiger and a leopard there, but we didn't film with them in there because of safety and because of the pandemic," Cardi revealed. "We spliced those scenes together." But there was an exception done for the snake scene. “I was naked, and one of them peed all over me.”
"Everything has completely changed because of the pandemic. You know, I was constantly on the road, now I'm mostly at home with my baby. Everything that I had planned for this year has to be rescheduled for God knows when. So it's just crazy, it's a lot.”
While answering fans’ questions about the cost of her music videos, Cardi continued to add that a whopping $400,000 was spent for the breathtaking and quite iconic “Money” visual while “Bartier Cardi” set the mother of one back by $150,000.
“Bartier was like 150K and I was pregnant so I was trying my best to conceal my tiny belly,” she tweeted. “I felt uncomfortable in the car cause I really wanted to be sexy with offset but I was looking very pregnant so I didn’t felt sexy I was looking fat.”
Her debut single “Bodak Yellow,” which skyrocketed its way to the No.1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 over the summer of 2017, surprisingly only had a production budget of $15,000, with Cardi revealing that the only expenses she had was to get her videographer a ticket out to Dubai where the video was being filmed.
“Fun fact : Bodak yellow music video cost me 15 thousand dollars .I was in Dubai and I said ....I gotta fly picture (videographer) out here ...BOOM BOOM BANG ! Ya know the rest.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTErZ%2Bippeoe6S7zGifqK9dosKktIydoJ1lk5a%2FpbWMm2SappRir7PBzahkppmiqHq0vMSnq2annmLBqbHIq2SppJWWwKZ5zJ5kpq2jnrBuwsidnKhn