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Getting to the bottom of a mystery track that claims to feature the candidate\u2019s hip-hop alter ego<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\tNew York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani<\/a> was once a rapper<\/a> named Mr. Cardamom \u2014 and his rap career is still<\/em> 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<\/a> featuring an Apple Music<\/a> screenshot of a song called \u201cBENTON BUILD.\u201d It\u2019s credited to a rapper named qrinceton, with a feature listed from Mr. Cardamom. But there\u2019s no trace of Mamdani on the silky song, which was released on July 11, about two weeks after he won<\/a> the city\u2019s Democratic mayoral primary in an upset<\/a> that made headlines around the world. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat absolutely is not Zohran,\u201d a Mamdani representative tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. So what happened here?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWalden qualified his X post by noting that \u201cunless an impostor pulled a prank, Zohran briefly returned to his rap career.\u201d It appears that the first part of that sentence was right \u2014\u00a0Mr. Cardamom\u2019s 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\u2019t resemble Mamdani\u2019s vocal tone, heard in actual Mr. Cardamom songs such as \u201cNani\u201d and \u201cKanda (Chap Chap)\u201d (released in 2017 and 2015, respectively, when he was a foreclosure prevention counselor moonlighting as a rapper). Lines from the second verse, such as \u201cbanana peel triggers make it feel like World War III,\u201d are probably the last thing any credible mayoral candidate would be expressing to the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n