In the wee hours of Friday morning, Cardi B has released her first new song of 2019: “Please Me,” a collaboration with Bruno Mars. The pair have worked together in the past, most notably on last year’s remix of Mars’ “Finesse” — which the pair performed on the 2018 Grammy Awards — and Cardi was slated to open Mars’ North American tour last fall. Ultimately, she pulled out due to her brand-new baby and other things Cardi.
She performed on the 2019 Grammys last weekend as well, and walked away with the Best Rap Album prize for her “Invasion of Privacy” album — the first time a solo female artist has won that award. “Please Me” was produced by Bruno Mars and his usual crew, the Stereotypes.
Last month Cardi announced that she plans to release a new album this year, possibly as soon as spring. “Of course it’s gonna be an album in 2019,” she said during an interview on Instagram Live. “Hopefully, I could get my album done around the same time that ‘Invasion of Privacy’ came out, but I don’t know how possible that’s gonna be because I feel like I’m going to be extremely, extremely busy.”
While there was talk several weeks back of a deluxe edition of “Invasion” being released with new tracks, given her comments it seems likely that any new material would be held for a sophomore release. She was a featured artist on several songs in 2018 — most recently Pardison Fontaine’s “Backin’ It Up” and El Alfa’s “Mi Mami,” along with the Maroon 5 summer mash “Girls Like You” — but “Please Me” is the first release of her own since the album.