🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

When we check back in with Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) in You Season 4, the book-loving serial killer claims he’s a changed man. Joe simply wants to enrich the young minds of London’s Queen’s College as a literature professor with an assumed name. (Cheerio, Jonathan Moore.) That’s why, before the season premiere is over, Joe is dismembering a body to the bumping sound of Cardi B’s “I Like It.” Because he’s changed. 

The moment is integral to reminding viewers exactly what kind of pragmatic brutality Joe is capable of. So the scene needed the perfect musical pairing — one “that’s upbeat in just the right way” for optimal contrast, showrunner Sera Gamble tells Tudum. While other tracks were considered, Belcalis Almanzar’s pop hit brought the magic. 

Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) looking at what he's done

It didn’t hurt that Cardi is social media BFFs with Badgley. 

Cardi’s You fandom initially became legend in October 2021, when she tweeted her delight over a complimentary Badgley interview. Soon enough, Badgley changed his Twitter profile photo to an image of Cardi; she made hers a screenshot of Joe in his beloved subterranean cage. Eventually, Cardi tweeted what was essentially You fan fiction and received a gift box “from” Joe. 

“Whenever someone tells me that an artist I admire has watched the show, I just get very excited,” says Gamble. “We all were so happy to hear that she liked it and not at all surprised that she and Penn were getting along on Twitter.” 

But even Badgley wasn’t aware Episode 1’s bloody moment would be paired with Cardi’s tropical trap rundown of her favorite things. “[During filming] you scarcely ever know what’s going to be playing when you’re doing something, especially something like dismembering a body,” he tells Tudum. 

While “everybody wanted Cardi in the show,” according to Badgley, the road to her needle drop was as twisty as Season 4’s whodunit. Initially, a different song was slotted into Joe’s season-opening disposal of a body. “But one of the fun things about producing this show is sometimes an artist will hear what the scene is about and just say, ‘No,’ ” Gamble explains. The You team saw the rejection as “an opportunity” to find an even better track.  

“Like, who’s written a song that we love? And also gets the joke of the show and the tone of the show?” Gamble continues. “Who understands that we’re not trying to say anything about their song by scoring the blood spatter hitting Joe’s face?” 

Cardi B, of course, gets it — and she likes it like that. 

You Season 4, Part 1 is available to stream now. Part 2 launches March 9. 

Additional reporting by Chancellor Agard