Cardi B’s ‘Bodak Yellow’ Video Reaches A Rare YouTube Milestone: A Billion Views

Cardi B first became a household name in 2018 on the strength of her breakthrough hit, “Bodak Yellow,” as the song racked up plays and accolades on its way to becoming Cardi’s first No. 1 hit — and the first No. 1 record from a solo female rap artist since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” twenty years earlier in 1998.

Today, the video for “Bodak Yellow” reached a milestone reserved for only the most popular clips on YouTube: reaching over one billion views. It’s Cardi’s first solo video to reach one billion, after her video for “I Like It” — her second No. 1 record featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin — and Maroon 5’s video for “Girls Like You,” which also went No. 1 and on which Cardi features, reached one billion views in 2019.

Cardi recently revealed that despite its popularity, “Bodak Yellow” was relatively inexpensive as far as music videos go. “Fun fact: ‘Bodak Yellow’ music video cost me 15 thousand dollars,” she tweeted back in January. “I was in Dubai and I said… I gotta fly Picture (videographer) out here… BOOM BOOM BANG! Ya know the rest.” By comparison, her more recent videos, like the ones for “Money” and “WAP,” cost astronomically more — $400,000 and $1 million, respectively.