Inside Cardi B's last performance at Broccoli City Festival before maternity leave
The rapper said she'll return to go on tour with Bruno Mars.
Bright yellow caution tape was tied to Cardi B's trailer.
It was a last-ditch effort to keep fans, artists and their entourages, and other very important people "just a few feet back, please," as the very pregnant rapper made her way into Broccoli City Festival, held Saturday in Washington D.C.'s RFK Stadium.
Whether venue security realized it or not, the tape created a sort of boyband pandemonium around the rapper's arrival.
It'd be the last performance she'd give before taking a break ahead of the impending birth of her baby with fiancé Offset, of Migos fame.
The mom-to-be announced she'd be taking a maternity leave of sorts in a hilarious, profanity-filled Instagram post -- the place where she first accumulated fame as a funny ex-stripper who mused on about life, and gave advice fans never knew they needed. "I’ll be back for the Bruno Mars tour," which kicks off in Denver on Sept. 7, she assured fans.
After snapping a photo of herself, with one leg up sexily on the couch, Cardi was whisked to the stage in a golf cart as fans -- men and women alike -- screamed her name.
Although many fans are impressed with Cardi's supposed overnight success and her ability to create a superstar music brand after appearing on just two seasons of "Love & Hip Hop: New York," for mothers, Cardi represents something different -- progress.
For a generation of women before her, pregnancy would have announced the end of a career, definitely not its beginning.
Like her rap foremother before her, Lauryn Hill sang about the pressure she felt to abort her first child, whom she had before her hit debut album, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." In her 1998 hit song, "Zion," which was dedicated to her son, lyrics explained how her label pressured her.
"Look at your career, they said/Lauryn baby, use your head," she crooned some 20 years ago, "but instead I chose to use my heart."
B**** is on 10 percent.
With Cardi, it's clear time has been kind to mothers. Last year, another mother, Serena Williams, won the Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter, and Beyonce famously performed at last year's Grammys while carrying twins.
And on Saturday night, as the sun set over the nation's capital, a 25-year-old woman from the Bronx began her set by performing "Foreva," from her 2016 mixtape, "Gangsta B**** Music, Vol. 1."
An oversized black Princess Diana T-shirt and oversized jean jacket expertly covered up her growing bump as she attempted to dance in thigh-high stiletto boots.
After performing her collaboration with G-Eazy, "No Limit," many expected her fiancé's rap trio, which was slated to headline Broccoli City Festival, to help her when she began "Drip" from her latest album "Invasion of Privacy."
Instead, she asked the crowd for help.
"Y'all gon' help me sing the guys' part, 'cause they ain't around," she said.
Before she performed her biggest hit, "Bodak Yellow," and as she began to slow down on stage, Cardi -- in typical fashion -- announced, "I need some f****** water ... B**** is on 10 percent."
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