
“Up”’s very catchy main refrain—which Cardi B has been accused of ripping off—is not a sexual innuendo; it’s about having unsettled beef. “If it’s up, then it’s up, then it’s up, then it’s stuck,” Cardi repeats in the chorus. The track is a tight and unsurprisingly funny dismissal of detractors, “bitches” whose “breath smell like horse sex,” who call her ugly while their boyfriends are secretly trying to seduce her. Cardi is skilled at these types of brusque taunts. She raps over a foreboding bassline and the clinks of what sounds like the Triggerman beat, but her taut delivery drives the song: “I said my face bomb, ass tight/Racks stack up Shaq height.” “Up” has Cardi’s characteristic self-assurance and instantly quotable one-liners—it’s a solid showing.