Cardi B has released her new track “Up” and, as promised, it comes with an accompanying music video. The Tanu Muino-directed clip opens with a shot of lingerie-clad Cardi in a cemetery near a gravestone that reads “RIP 2020”. Dressed in all-black, she straddles a gravestone in the shape of a man – a shot that eagle-eyed viewers have noted bears a striking resemblance to photographer Patrick Magaud’s Exhibition in Paris series.
Released in 1984, Exhibition in Paris is a set of humourous and raunchy photographs of naked or semi-clad women across Paris. The images pull fun at the seriousness of their surroundings, from a naked woman riding a bicycle through a busy junction, to a woman naked in the Louvre fountain.
The music video nods to a particular set of images in the series of a woman in a graveyard, dressed in black lingerie and (you guessed it) mounting a man-shaped gravestone. Whether Cardi’s aware of the comparison or not (perhaps it’s her creative team’s doing), the resemblance between the two images is uncanny.
“Up” is Cardi’s follow-up to her viral hit with Megan Thee Stallion, “WAP”. In a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, she talked about how she wanted to make a track that’s more similar to her first mixtape, which was inspired by Chicago drill. “I was young, and I liked that and everything, so my mixtape was very all about gangster violence,” she said. “If it's up, then it’s stuck, and that’s where I wanted to take it with this record.”
She also said she plans to put out an album this year and has “like 50 songs” recorded. “I’m just still not satisfied,” she said. “If I’m not satisfied, I’m just not satisfied, but I really want to put out an album this year. I feel like I have no choice now. Now, I feel like I exceeded my limit of holding. I just need to stop with the fear.”
