As if she’s not booked and busy enough, Cardi B is adding to her bag with her latest venture: Grow-Good Beauty Hair Care.
After weeks of anticipation and subtle Instagram teases, the Bronx rapper’s brand hits retailers on Wednesday (Apr. 15), with six products available to customers, a fusion of her Dominican roots and the latest innovations in scalp and hair technology. From Repair Systems for hair to hero masks and two variations of shampoo and conditioner, Cardi made it a point to serve her fans after years of them asking for her haircare routine.
“The aha moment when I felt like I needed my own brand [was] when I kept seeing people try … the mask that I keep doing to grow my hair,” Cardi told PEOPLE.
In an era where artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna and now Cardi all dabble in hair care products, it’s helping redefine a long-discussed topic in beauty shops across the diaspora: what really is considered “good hair.” For years, in my neighborhood and among male and female friends, “good hair” was typically attributed to girls or guys who had length and often wore their hair straight to drive the point home or had natural curls. More often than not, the ones with straight hair were championed and tied to Eurocentric beauty standards. It was always a conversation about hair texture and as I got older, those conversations grew louder and gained greater context with examinations on “Good Morning America” and in various documentaries.
Now Cardi is prepared to put that stereotype to bed.
“Growing up, we always hear like, ‘Oh, she got that good hair. She got that good hair.’ What does that mean? … They wasn’t talking about my hair. So I want people to know that we’re growing our hair good,” she said.
She added, “Just because you got, like, slick hair or like a certain type of texture hair, it doesn’t mean that it’s growing good. … A lot of women, you have a certain type of hair texture, but it’s thin, it breaks, it’s damaged. What’s the point of having a hair texture and your sh-t is damaged? It’s not growing good. So it’s like we’re going to grow that hair good, whatever texture it is, it doesn’t matter.”
Cardi’s declaration echoes films of yesteryear that examined the subject. Regina Kimball released the 2006 documentary “My Nappy Roots: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage,” which examines the policing of Black hair through culture and politics, compared to that of European whites. Three years later, Chris Rock released his own documentary centered on the styling and history of Black hair in “Good Hair.” Rock said his inspiration for the film came from hearing his youngest daughter question whether she had “good hair.”
In that same vein, Cardi is using Grow-Good to show her children how to appreciate their hair, recalling that she sometimes hated her hair growing up.
“It’s a lot of positive affirmation stuff because that’s really important,” she said. “It’s really hard when like … not hard, but it’s like you kind of feel a little bit out of place sometimes when you see your cousins having long hair or when your aunties are doing all your cousins hair, and they just start sucking their teeth when they got to do yours, ‘Oh my God, her hair. Oh my God, this is going to take all day, and she be crying.’ So it’s like, I be trying to make my kid know that doing their hair is not like a bother.”
Grow-Good arrives on April 15. The Repair System consists of two shampoos (Wash Cycle and Wash Cycle+) for $14.99 each, two versions of conditioner (Soft Serve and Soft Serve+) for $14.99 each, the Get Rich hero mask for $19.99, and the Everything Serum for $17.99.
