Entertainment

Cardi B, Lil Nas X & Ariana Grande On Times Most Influential People

Published

5 years ago

July 17, 2019

Peter Dredd

Times Releases 25 Most Influential People On The Internet

Time released its yearly list of top influential people. They compiled a list of 25 most influential people on the internet and it has Cardi B, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande, Donald Trump in it.

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Atlanta rapper Lil Nas X. Born Montero Lamar Hill, he recently came out as gay shocking fans with his surprising revelation, the rapper developed his online fanbase (and his fluency in the quick, satiric language of the internet) by curating memes on Twitter.

Then came “Old Town Road.” The track, made to a $30 beat and released in late 2018, first gained steam as the soundtrack to the “#yeehaw” challenge on video-sharing app TikTok, then for getting removed from Billboard’s Hot Country chart.

Lil Nas X recruited Billy Ray Cyrus for a remix, which has now topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 15 weeks and logged 9 of the 11 biggest streaming weeks of all time.

Ariana Grande didn’t have to put out a second album, Thank U, Next, just months after her Grammy-winning 2018 project Sweetener. But she did, and at one point in February held all three top spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — the first artist to do so since the Beatles.

Grande recently became Instagram’s most-followed musician, giving her an even bigger platform (223 million followers across Instagram and Twitter) to promote her work.

Cardi B’s rise to stardom can be tracked all the way back to Instagram, where she now boasts more than 47 million followers. As much as the Bronx native’s life has changed in recent years, Cardi’s approach to being online has remained mostly the same—these days, she sandwiches confessional videos and memes between red carpet shots, concert footage and political missives.

.@iamcardib is one of TIME’s most influential people on the Internet this year https://t.co/3meUSfy4rO pic.twitter.com/Ywp0oJCREU

— TIME (@TIME) July 16, 2019

In January, Cardi B made headlines for posting a video criticizing President Trump for not funding the government, “all for a f-cking wall.”

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The video went viral, and even came to the attention of Sen. Chris Murphy and Sen. Brian Schatz, who publicly debated whether they should retweet the video.

Check out the complete list here