She doesn't mean to be rude. ("I'm polite," she says.) It's just that she's genuinely overwhelmed by the possibility of having to meet an unending stream of fawning strangers, A-listers, and people who aren't her cousins.

So Cardi is a No New Friends celebrity who struggles to volley compliments and can't spend much time outside on windy days because of her asthma. The other way in which Cardi is different from most stars with mega–fan bases: She is unabashedly, directly political, reacting to the news cycle in real time on social media.

"Imagine a old ass female teacher bussing a burner [eye-roll emoji]," Cardi wrote in the caption of an Instagram post, sharing a meme lambasting President Trump's proposal to arm teachers.

Cardi B cares deeply about America's reception on the world stage. It mortifies her that the United States has become a nation where mass shootings are routine. And it is personally distressing to her that Donald Trump occupies the sacred office once held by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“I was such a dumb-ass when I was 21,” Cardi says. Aren’t you only 25? “Yeah.” You feel like you’re old enough to have a gun now? “Yeah, I got common sense now.”

"When it came to the school shooting, that's when I was like, 'Okay, this nigga really think that everything is a joke.' Have you ever shot a gun before? It's very scary and loud. It's traumatizing to shoot somebody. On top of that, what makes you think that a kid wouldn't come behind a teacher, shoot her from the back, then go in her desk and take the gun? And now you got two guns. It's like"—Cardi scrunches up her face like she is struggling to find order in the scribbles of a true moron—"'Don't you calculate?'"

Cardi B feels New York's "extremely strict" gun laws should apply nationwide. She is pro–mental evaluations for purchasers and thinks the minimum age to own a gun should be raised, even above 21.

"I was such a dumb-ass when I was 21."

Aren't you only 25?

"Yeah."

You feel like you're old enough to have a gun now?

"Yeah," she says. "I got common sense now."

When I ask, given her demonstrable interest, if she'd ever considered a future in politics, her conviction evaporates: "I'd be wrong a lot of times," she says quietly. But it really eats at her that some people might think her responses to current events are a social-media strategy.

"Me," begins Cardi B, "I'm always watching the news. I'm always looking at it on my phone. I hate when you talk about something that's going on in the community, people think, because you're famous, you doing it for clout. But you concerned about it because you are a citizen of America; you are a citizen of the world. If I want to get cool points, I could take a picture with a thong and my ass and y'all gonna give me the same amount of likes. I'm gonna trend even bigger."

It should be said, before we let her go, that the first time I met Cardi B, she was asleep.

It's humbling to be formally introduced to a woman who is not awake to receive you. It was a few days before our dinner, backstage at an event where Cardi was booked to perform a single song for thousands of dollars. The hour was late, but everyone else in the room was awake, including Patience, who introduced me to Cardi's unconscious form with a chipper "Caity, Cardi. Cardi, Caity." Cardi was as supine as it is possible to be in a corseted minidress, sprawled on a velvet settee, a napkin shielding her crotch from discourteous eyes. When it came time for Cardi to perform her one song, Patience roused her. Cardi stood unmoving—except for her eyes, blinking away vestiges of dreams—while her stylist laced her breasts more tightly into their leather encasement. Cardi smiled at me and murmured—to me? to the room? to herself?—"I feel like a wild animal. 'She has a party, let her out, let her out!' Then 'Put her back in!'"

But when I watched Cardi B go from fully asleep to onstage flirting with a crowd in the span of two minutes, I didn't think of a "wild animal." And I don't think of a wild animal when, after dinner, I observe an exhausted Cardi gather up the cuddly blanket she brought into her restaurant booth so she can head straight to the studio for a night of frantic, never-perfect-enough album work. I think of a music-box ballerina, crumpled in the peaceful dark right up until the very second when forces greater than herself decide it's time for her to appear onstage, and so, instantly, she is onstage, feverishly and ceaselessly executing her assigned task until the box is closed again.

She orders the rest of her ribs to go. I ask if she thinks she'll actually eat them.

"Probably around 5 a.m." she says, with a wan smile, and is gone.

Caity Weaver is a GQ writer and editor.

This story originally appeared in the May 2018 issue with the title "Cardi B’s Money Moves."

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