Getting to the bottom of a mystery track that claims to feature the candidate’s hip-hop alter ego
New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was once a rapper named Mr. Cardamom — and his rap career is still past tense. On Oct. 4, attorney Jim Walden, who recently backed out of his own independent mayoral campaign weeks before the November election, made an X post featuring an Apple Music screenshot of a song called “BENTON BUILD.” It’s credited to a rapper named qrinceton, with a feature listed from Mr. Cardamom. But there’s no trace of Mamdani on the silky song, which was released on July 11, about two weeks after he won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary in an upset that made headlines around the world.
“That absolutely is not Zohran,” a Mamdani representative tells Rolling Stone. So what happened here?
Walden qualified his X post by noting that “unless an impostor pulled a prank, Zohran briefly returned to his rap career.” It appears that the first part of that sentence was right — Mr. Cardamom’s presence on the song is a joke of some kind. The first verse features a rapid-fire, barely intelligible verse from the otherwise unknown qrinceton himself. And the second verse takes a smoother approach, which doesn’t resemble Mamdani’s vocal tone, heard in actual Mr. Cardamom songs such as “Nani” and “Kanda (Chap Chap)” (released in 2017 and 2015, respectively, when he was a foreclosure prevention counselor moonlighting as a rapper). Lines from the second verse, such as “banana peel triggers make it feel like World War III,” are probably the last thing any credible mayoral candidate would be expressing to the world.
It appears most likely that qrinceton, an upstart artist whom Rolling Stone was unable to reach for comment, utilized the same DSP featured artist hack that had illegitimate versions of classic mixtapes on streaming services earlier this summer. As industry sources told us then, it’s “too easy” for artists to manipulate digital music providers by adding any name they want to the “primary artist” section of their music upload. Sometimes, like with “BENTON BUILD,” the erroneous upload makes it all the way to DSPs, and it’s up to the wronged artist to issue a takedown, which could take weeks. (Similar issues have led to AI-generated fake music showing up on Spotify credited to long-defunct acts.)
Qrinceton has 313 monthly Spotify listeners, and the YouTube clip of “BENTON BUILD” has just 11 views. It wouldn’t be surprising if he pulled the false-feature move for the exact attention he’s getting right now. As of now, “BENTON BUILD” remains on all DSPs — and Mamdani is prepping for the final stretch of his momentous campaign to run New York City.
