Curious voters often dig deep into the archives to find out more about mayoral candidates, but it’s rare for those scavenger hunts to uncover rap songs. That’s the case for Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist vying to be the next mayor of New York City. Before he became a standout for NYC progressives, he was a foreclosure prevention counselor who moonlit as a rapper — first as Young Cardamom and later as Mr. Cardamom (“Better drop the act that I’m young,” he told the New York Times in 2019).
At a recent anti-Zohran rally, someone condemned him as a “C-class rapper,” but on his X account, Mr. Cardamom jokingly characterizes himself as “a B-list rapper.” He used the sparse account to promote “Nani,” a cheeky tribute to his grandmother that debuted in April 2019. The song recently went viral again as Mandani’s political star has risen. The video starts with Cardamom chastising his onscreen grandmother, played by cookbook author and actress Madhur Jaffrey, as “not a good nani.” He then starts rapping in a whisper flow about being “the best damn nani that you ever done seen” over a minimalist bass drum and snaps. For most of the video, Jaffrey pantomimes Cardamom’s bars: “At the top where I be/Got a great-grandkid man, fuck a niece.”
The end of the video shows Cardamom, Jaffrey, and others turning up in a food truck as Cardamom chants, “Go head make a wrap for your nani/Get the gwop spend a rack on your nani.” The video attracted 200,000 views on YouTube, and the song garnered 43,105 streams on Spotify (it’s the sole entry on Cardamom’s official Spotify page). In a 2019 New York Times piece about the video, Mamdani reveals that the song was written in 2017 about his grandmother Praveen Nair, a former social worker and chairperson of the nonprofit organization Salaam Baalak Trust.
According to that same story, Mamdani rapped publicly for the first time when he was running for vice president as a junior at the Bronx High School of Science. In 2015, he officially adopted the music moniker Young Cardamom and partnered with lifelong friend Abdul Bar Hussein (rapper HAB) on “Kanda (Chap Chap),” a blippy anthem to Ugandan-style chapati on which Cardamom drops the one-of-a-kind woo, “I like you so much I want to buy you a cow.”
In 2016, they released a six-song EP entitled Sidda Mukyaalo, which showed hints of the political acuity that now shapes Mamdani’s populist, affordability-focused mayoral platform. That year, in an interview with OkayAfrica, Cardamom revealed that the album title is the Lugandan translation for “no going back to the village.” He told the outlet, “I can’t go back to the village because, as an Asian Ugandan, I simply do not have any village. The city is all I have.” (Mamdani is the son of Ugandan-Indian scholar Mahmood Mandani and Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair.) Throughout Sidda Mukyaalo, the duo raps in six different languages while delving into their experiences as Ugandans.
On “Askari,” the two trade multilingual bars over sinister, EDM-reminiscent horns. Cardamom said the song “play[s] with post-colonial societies’ lasting obsession with and valuing of whiteness.” On the track, he depicts a security guard opening a gate for a white man, but being less inviting to people of color. “When it’s a black friend or family member, it always takes a bit longer [for security to open the door],” Cardamom said, reflecting on his real-life experiences.
A year later, Cardamom and HAB collaborated on “#1 Spice,” created for the soundtrack of the Disney film Queen of Katwe (Mamdani served as music supervisor). The movie was directed by Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair. In October 2016, he talked to South African radio station Kaya 959 about his contribution to the film, joking that “nepotism and hard work goes a long way.” “#1 Spice” is another playful song, with HAB rapping, “Bring the flavor to the fish, bring the flavor to the rice/Who’s the number-one spice?” Cardamom takes over the second verse, rhyming in a mesh of languages in a video which stars him and HAB flirting and dancing around with Queen of Katwe star Lupita Nyong’o.
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Cardamom filled his music with odes to his culture. He wasn’t about to become rap’s next sensation, but his funnier moments show that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, a valuable trait in a political world that prioritizes a candidate’s likability. Sidda Mukyaalo, laden with social commentary, also captures why Mamdani has become an exciting candidate in New York City’s Democratic primary race. The New York Times’ most recent polls show that Mandani is polling close to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, back from the political dead after several scandals, including sexual-harassment accusations. It’s no wonder that Mamdani’s viral takedown of Cuomo during a mayoral debate had the gravitas of a URL rap battle — he has some experience on the mic.
From Rolling Stone US
