Up

The follow-up to Cardi B's smash hit "WAP," this boastful anthem finds the Rap Queen flexing about her allure. I could make the party hot, I could make your body rock Wealth. Racks stack up Shaq height And bling. Jewelry on me, flashlight I been lit since last night

Having asserted her worth in the verses, Cardi states in the chorus that her popularity and success is enduring (i.e. she's going to remain "up"). If it's up, then it's up, then it's up, then it's stuck The phrase, "it's up then it's stuck" describes success that can't be stopped. During a YouTube Live interview, Cardi explained the term is Southern slang used on the streets of her husband Offset's home city of Atlanta. "I feel like this is more like of an Atlanta thing, I don't know, a Georgia thing," she said. She added that after Offset kept saying "up and stuck," she started repeating "up and a stuck out of nowhere." It should be noted the phrase has featured in numerous songs by hip-hop artists prior to Cardi's use. According to Genius, there had been close to 100 variations of the term before the release of "Up." Travis Scott, for instance, announces "It's up, it's stuck" at the start of his verse on the December 2019 Jackboys track "Out West."

In a live chat with Apple Music's Zane Lowe ahead of its release, Cardi described the NSFW song as "more gangsta, more cocky" than "WAP," adding that the goal was to create something inspired by the Chicago Drill music scene. "My last song was very sexual, very sexual. So I always want my next songs to be different than the one before," she explained. "If a topic on one of my songs is money, the other topic I want it to be about something else. When I started rapping, when I first put music out, like my mixtape, it was all... This might sound crazy, but I got really inspired of Drill Chicago music. I was young, and I liked that and everything, so my mixtape was very all about gangster violence. If it's up, then it's stuck. That's where I wanted to take it with this record."