Who is Tanu Muino? Meet the director behind Cardi B’s Up video

Tanu Muino directed Cardi B’s latest music video, Up, which premiered today. Who is Tanu Muino, and what else has she directed?

Who is Tanu Muino?

Tanu Muino is a Ukrainian photographer and music video director based in Odessa. 

She has previously collaborated with artists Vera Brezhneva (VERA), Nadya Dorofeeva (DOROFEEVA), Sisters, and Monatik, Lida Lee and Nino, among others. 

Muino also directed Katy Perry’s video for Small Talk in 2019. 

Her Instagram profile describes her as a “dark character lady”.

In terms of visual style, her videos are characterised by stark zooms, vibrant colours, symmetry, action sequences and sensuality.

Tanu Muino founded contemporary fashion brand Jealousy in 2013. From its website, the brand’s signature is “atmospheric prints, vibrant colours in contrasting textures and eyecatching details”.

Born in 1989, Muino is 32 years old.

Tanu Muino and Cardi B’s Up

Cardi B flew Tanu from Ukraine to the United States in order to make the video, wanting something “really different”. Listen to Cardi B on their collaboration in the second slide below.

Cardi B said in a live YouTube broadcast before its release that she “wanted a more hood song. I thought that my last song was more sexy…I wanted to do something more gangster.”

Her previous music video, for the collaborative song WAP with Megan Thee Stallion, allegedly cost $1 million to produce. It earned the title of NME’s number one song of 2020.

Meanwhile, the two videos that preceded it, Money and Please Me, cost $400K and $900K respectively.

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Bruno Cooke

Bruno Cooke has been a freelance journalist since 2019, primarily with GRV Media. He was an early contributor to The Focus, and has written for HITC, Groundviews and the Sheffield University newspaper – he earned his MA in Global Journalism there in 2021. He’s the Spoken Word Poetry Editor for The Friday Poem, and self-published his debut novel Reveries in 2019, which his mum called both a “fine read” and “excellent Christmas present”. Bruno has lived in China, Sri Lanka and the Philippines and likes, among other things: bicycle touring, black and white Japanese films, pub quizzes, fermentation and baklava. In 2023, Bruno will set off with his partner on a round-the-world cycle.