You know that old saying about “don’t quit your day job?” Well, that’s excellent advice for Zohran Mamdani, who has a solid gig as New York’s Mayor since his election last November. But according to the New York Times, on Thursday (April 16), Mamdani, 34, and his wife, graphic designer Rama Duwaji, released the details of their joint tax return and let’s just say it’s a good thing his new gig pays in the mid-$250K range, because the cash coming in from Mamdani’s previous rap career isn’t going to keep the couple afloat.
The paper said that the couple reported a total 2025 income of $145,000, most of it coming from Mamdani’s state assemblyman salary of $131,296. A much smaller portion, $1,643, came in the form of royalties from Mamdani’s former gig as a rapper under the name Mr. Cardamom, with more than half of that figure coming from abroad. At press time it was not known what Mamdani’s previous-year hip-hop-related earnings amounted to.
Even though the royalties were modest, according to Luminate, Mamdani’s U.S. streams exploded in 2025. The six songs from his 2016 EP, Sidda Mukyallo, credited to Young Cardamom and Mamdani’s musical partner HAB (Abdul Bar Hussein), pulled in a combined 58,000 U.S. official on-demand streams in 2025. To date, the EP has 79,000 streams, meaning that 74% of its lifetime streams came last year.
In addition, his 2019 single, “Nani,” had 219,000 U.S. official on-demand streams in the U.S., which is a majority of its 232,000 lifetime total. Young Cardamom and HAB’s 2016 “#1 Spice” song had 243,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in 2025 out of its 595,000 lifetime total.
Before his rise to Mayor, Mamdani had a side hustle as a rapper under the stage names Young Cardamom and then Mr. Cardamom. As he gained more name recognition during his run for the city’s top office, his catalog picked up steam, with his streaming numbers getting a significant bump.
In addition to the Sidda Mukyaalo EP — on which the two men rap in six different languages, while drawing from their shared Ugandan heritage — they also released “#1 Spice” on the soundtrack to the Disney biographical drama Queen of Katwe.
Previously, the U.S. streams for Young Cardamom and HAB’s catalog went from less than 1,000 in late May of 2025, before Mamdani’s secured the nomination, to more than 15,000 from June 13-19, the week before he became the presumptive Democratic candidate for Mayor, with streams rising by 582% during that period.
Check out Mr. Cardamom’s “Nani” below
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