Cardi B can sell out arenas, move products and command a seven-figure performance fee. Yet the thought of what her four children might inherit has left her worried.
Planning Ahead
Her music will continue earning money for years, but collecting those earnings could be another matter. Cardi began thinking about the contracts and royalty disputes her children might face if they ever had to manage her catalog without her.
“I was panicking,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “It’s like, yo, I leave this earth and my kids [are] going to have just music royalties that they’re most [likely] going to have to be arguing people about it.”
The rapper knows her children would inherit more than just songs. “They’re going to have a couple of properties and a couple of liquid money,” she said.
Still, she kept coming back to one question: “What is something that God forbid something happens to me, I leave behind that is for them?”
One answer is Grow-Good Beauty, the hair-care company she launched this year. “This is, God forbid, if something happened to me; this is theirs,” Cardi said. She wants Kulture, Wave, Blossom and her youngest son to have a business of their own, complete with products and customers.
Celebrity Net Worth estimates Cardi’s fortune at $120 million. It values her music catalog rights at approximately $70 million. Both numbers are estimates, not a public accounting of her assets or an amount set aside for her children. A catalog can be immensely valuable, but Cardi’s concern is whether her children could easily control and benefit from what she leaves.
She has already shown that her name can move merchandise. Her second Fashion Nova collection reportedly generated $1 million in sales during its first 24 hours in 2019.
That was revenue for the collection, not Cardi’s personal earnings.
She later co-founded Whipshots, a vodka-infused whipped cream brand, and took an investment stake in beverage company Zevia. Grow-Good adds another venture built around a subject she has discussed with fans for years: hair care.
Its presale sold out in about an hour, according to Byrdie. Cardi said she spent time developing the formulas because she knew people would scrutinize the results. “People just think, ‘Oh, you can just put product in the container,’” she told the publication. “But not me.”
The first rush showed demand. Repeat customers will determine whether Grow-Good becomes the lasting asset she envisions.
Cardi’s performance income helps explain the scale of her plans. Her 35-show “Little Miss Drama Tour” reportedly grossed roughly $70 million from about 453,000 tickets, according to Celebrity Net Worth. She has also said she was paid $1 million to perform for 35 minutes at a private event in 2022. The tour’s gross represents ticket revenue before expenses, including production, travel and staffing.
Big earnings have not made her casual about smaller losses. In April, Cardi said thieves used her missing American Express card to make about $40,000 in purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, followed by another $20,000 at an Apple store.
“You know I don’t play about my money, right?” she said during an Instagram Live.
She explained that each purchase sends an alert to her phone and her accountant. They shut down the card after spotting the activity. Cardi said she had clear images of the suspects attempting to withdraw cash and warned, “Y’all going to jail.”
Her account of the theft was widely reported, though the available reporting did not establish a criminal outcome.
That same attention to money runs through her plans for her children. Cardi is still earning from the songs that made her famous. Now she is trying to build something they can own after the applause stops.
