Cardi B shot her new music video for “AH HA” in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, but she believes that she was “overcharged” by the New York Police Department for the permits required for the shoot.
In an X Spaces session on Thursday (Aug. 27) ahead of the release of the video, Cardi B spoke with fans and revealed that the video cost more than she anticipated.
“I don’t understand how the fuck this music video was expensive,” she shared. “I swear to God, right, I wanted this music video to be simple. I wanted a very street New York summer vibe… I’m thinking, because a lot of artists do videos in the streets, that this video would be about $250,000. Bro, this video came out to be over a million.”
She added that one of the frustrating parts about the situation is that she doesn’t think that its budget is reflected in the video.
“If you look at the video, it doesn’t even give that,” she continued. “Because I’m Cardi B, I be getting overcharged… To get permits, I know for a fact [that] the average rapper that do music videos on blocks, it doesn’t cost that much. I really wanted to do my music video in a small block in the Bronx. No, they made me do it in different places. To get permits, it was so expensive. I feel like they overcharged me for permits… They made it a big deal because I’m Cardi B. It was about 40 NYPD cops, which made it impossible to motherfucking shoot. NYPD was being so… It was just doing too much.”
The video ended up being shot not in the Bronx, but rather in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on 58th Street between 4th and 5th Avenues. Per the Brooklyn Eagle, Bardi attracted a crowd of “hundreds” of onlookers.
Because of the issues surrounding the shoot, Cardi suggested that it will be the “last time” that she’ll do music videos in a public setting, at least ones that she can’t get full control of.
“It was a two-day video shoot, and it just like… I did not enjoy doing this music video,” she said. “On top of that, there was so many people on the streets. I don’t like seeing a lot of people; when I do music videos, I like having a closed set.”
Despite the negative experience, she said she thinks the finished product is “great,” but maintained that she doesn’t want to go through a similar experience again.
