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Music

Huh, Cardi B Is Really Good at ASMR

Hope you like whispering and wet mouth sounds!

If you needed any more proof that Cardi B has enough charisma to excel at more or less whatever field she applies herself in, something strange emerged today from the video department over at W Magazine. Apparently inspired by the Bronx rapper's love for those bafflingly popular YouTube clips where dead-eyed hosts tap their fingernails on sensitive microphones and whisper about cutting your hair or whatever, Cardi herself made an ASMR video. Over the course of a 13-minute clip, she talks about her love for the form—she apparently watches ASMR videos every day, which freaks out Offset—details her rapid rise in the music world, and her love for her new child, in dulcet whispers and mesmerizing repetitions.

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All the while a two-channel microphone setup picks up each and every tongue click and mouth sound, foregrounding all the unsettling ephemera that major media companies usually try to cut out of their interviews. It sounds fucking gross! Which I guess also means its good? I'm a bit unclear as to what actually makes successful ASMR, since I don't experience the tingly sensations that Cardi describes at the start of the video when I watch this stuff. Though I do love the more absurd videos that this scene has produced (please, please, please check out my favorite channel where a guy with a chinstrap does Yu-Gi-Oh ASMR). And really what's more absurd than one of our generation's most famously euphoric celebrities whispering about her hit songs while rubbing a gray blanket on a microphone?

When talking about her child, she uses one of those woodblock and wire toys, which makes some sorta pleasant shuffling sounds into the microphone, before she retreats back into familiar territory. By which I mean scraping her imposing fingernails on the microphone and stuttering her signature "okurrr"—the latter of which is absolutely bone-chilling in this context. It's a long watch by internet video standards but it's well worth your time. I also recommend mixing it with some new age tapes, for more proof of Cardi's neo-mystic genius.

Watch it here, and if you're still craving more celebrity ASMR content—it may not shock you to learn that the surrealist polymath Tierra Whack is pretty damn good at this sorta thing too.