Cardi B really knows how to follow up a monster hit.
The 28-year-old rapper released her first music video of 2021 at midnight ET on Friday, Feb. 5 with her new song "Up." The video, which is below, appropriately begins with Cardi at a cemetery to bid farewell to 2020 while wearing what might be the sexiest funereal outfit ever.
To celebrate the release, the star posted some nostalgia-fueled footage from the video to Instagram, captioning it with a memorable line from the song. "Bitches want smoke till I bring it to they door step!" she wrote. "Tell that bitch back, back, breath smell like horse sex!"
Offset proved to be quite the proud husband when he shared a clip on his own Instagram with the caption, "UP OUT NOW !!!!! You so amazing so creative and beautiful. You put in a lot of work nobody see's I'm Prada you!!!" He added three heart-eyes emojis.
During a Q&A on YouTube that streamed just prior to the video's debut, Cardi B explained that director Tanu Muino filmed it over a two-day shoot in December. The Grammy winner told fans that her goal with this song was to do something different from "WAP," her smash 2020 single with Megan Thee Stallion that was one of the most talked-about and popular songs of the year.
"The biggest the inspiration for this song, I wanted a more hood song," she shared. "I felt like my last song was too sexy. ... I wanted to do something more gangster, more cocky."
The song is definitely not lacking in confidence, with the lyrics boasting, "I said my face bomb, ass tight/ Racks stack up Shaq height/ Jewelry on me, flashlight/ I been lit since last night."
Cardi B offered more insight into her latest song's origins during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music that was released at the same time as the video.
"My last song was very sexual, very sexual, so I always want my next songs to be different than the one before," she said. "If it's up, then it's stuck. That's where I wanted to take it with this record."
As for when fans can expect the next album, she told Zane that she had hoped to release one in 2020 and has "got like 50 songs recorded," but that she isn't quite satisfied with what she has just yet. The "Bodak Yellow" performer added that while she hopes to release the album this year, that might be complicated by the fact that she would want to tour on the album right away, and it remains unclear when live shows will resume amid the ongoing pandemic.