Three weeks — that’s all the time the Spin Me Round record store had to prepare for rapper Cardi B’s visit, an event that saw at least 1,000 people attend.
But ask the people who made it happen and they’ll say it went off without a hitch.
“It was incredible to be able to have Cardi B and to bring this experience to so many people, that so many people got to see her, even if it was just for a moment,” said Stephanie Nagy, owner of Spin Me Round. “You should have seen the looks on all these women’s faces that are pregnant at the same time as her, how happy they were to be with her and taking a picture with her, with both of their babies and their bellies. It was just awesome how happy everyone was.”
Cardi B’s visit last Saturday, part of her new album release tour, threw the spotlight on Palmer Park Mall, the one-story shopping center on Route 248 that has managed to fight off the fate of many other small, regional shopping centers by consistently drawing in new tenants, many of them local businesses rather than national chains.
Fans waited in line for hours for photos, while a food truck served themed food like wraps and macaroni and cheese to them in the parking lot.
Nagy said the record store, which moved from the former Phillipsburg Mall to the Palmer Park Mall in 2020, had never hosted an event of that caliber before. It received 1,000 CD preorders for the rapper’s new album, “Am I the Drama?”
“I saw way more than 1,000 people show up,” she said.
Nagy said she was skeptical when Atlantic Records reached out to host the visit, to which she said, “Absolutely.”
“It’s like, ‘Yeah, sure, absolutely, no problem, that’s not going to happen’,” Nagy recalled. “So we don’t even have to worry about that because that’s not actually going to happen.”
Turns out, Spin Me Round was one of about a half dozen independent record stores in small cities chosen for the tour.
“I’ve had lots of people coming in [and] asking, ‘How did you get Cardi B here?’ And it’s like, because we’re awesome,” Nagy said. “You didn’t know?”
With the few weeks Nagy had to prepare for the visit, she said she was surprised with how much they got done and so easily, including securing permission for the event, working with police to ensure safety and sectioning off part of the store for photos.
No safety concerns or incidents happened, according to Nagy, who praised Palmer Township police for its work, and the fans as well. It was successful enough for Nagy to consider hosting similar meet-and-greets in the future, she added.
“Her fans were super excited and just super happy to be there,” she said. “So it was awesome. There was no pushing, there was no cutting, there was no fighting. Everyone understood we were here to have a good time.”
Karla Saavedra, Palmer Park Mall’s general manager, said she felt the biggest challenge leading up to the event was how negatively some people felt about it.
“I think when Cardi B announced that she was coming to Palmer Park, it wasn’t as welcomed by everyone,” she said. “There was a perception that because she’s a rapper, that there would be fights and chaos and the crowd would act up. And so I had a lot of pushback … from the stores, some smaller stores. There were a lot of concerns about security, and we honestly didn’t know what to expect because of the size of the crowd that was expected. And I think I did see a lot of posts on social media from residents where they were not as welcoming of this.”
Saavedra said she was glad to support Spin Me Round and prove those concerns unfounded for an event that brought good publicity for the mall and region. She added that this hopefully won’t be the last meet-and-greet for the mall and that they’ll continue to do other events.
“People want Palmer Park Mall to stay alive because it’s an old mall that has a lot of history and it’s a mall that we continue to fill,” she said. “It’s made up of mostly a lot of mom-and-pops. It’s our own residents. But how are we going to stay alive if we close our doors? If we’re going to allow stigmas or our own negative perceptions of different communities [to] stop us from enjoying something like this or from working in collaboration? … I’m not even sure how to express it. So it’s bittersweet. I’m excited that it went well, but it was sad to see just the perception of how unwelcoming Palmer can be at times and in general. It’s something that I have struggled very much with as the general manager of Palmer Park Mall throughout the years. I heard it when I came in and we’ve struggled to try to turn it around and make it a lot more diverse.”
One business owner who gave a warm welcome to Cardi B and her fans was Heather Griffith-Thomas, the owner of the mall’s Wrap’d Tight Fully Loaded 2.0 restaurant that opened at the mall last December and rolled out its food truck, normally shuttered for the season, specially for the visit.
The menu included macaroni and cheese bowls, quesadillas and the “Am I the Drama” wrap with baked chicken, cheddar cheese, hot sauce, hot honey and banana peppers.
“My ultimate dream would be … could I actually get to feed Cardi B?” Griffith-Thomas said. “She would have a long, exhausting day, my vision would be, and what if I could feed her and her team and give them some great, nutritious food? And something healthy for her? So I was hoping and praying that that would be the case.”
A food truck was on hand for Cardi B fans waiting in line for a meet-and-greet to celebrate the release of her new album, “Am I the Drama?” on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025, at Spin-Me-Round record store at the Palmer Park Mall in Palmer Township. (Jane Therese/Special to The Morning Call)
It was a long day for Griffith-Thomas and Wrap’d Tight. They showed up at 6 a.m., opened the food truck an hour later and stayed there until the end of the night, at which point Griffith-Thomas figured Cardi B needed some macaroni and cheese and street corn.
“So I went in with those two items, and she immediately took the mac and cheese,” Griffith-Thomas said. “And she looked at it, and then she started eating it, which was amazing. And what do you do when Cardi B is standing there, eating your food? And then normally they’ll take a bite, maybe to be nice, but she didn’t. She enjoyed it. She continued eating there, and then she went to pass it, and she turned back and finished eating some more. And so I was just so like … [excited cheer].”
An Instagram reel of Cardi B eating the food later went viral at nearly 13,000 views, a news release said.
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Just as Griffith-Thomas was about to leave the mall later on, she received a call from her husband Norwood, who helped provide security for the event and said Cardi B wanted more Wrap’d Tight food to go.
“That just meant everything to me,” Griffith-Thomas said.
She added, “Oftentimes we go to the city to have food or to see a show or something like that, but when somebody comes here and they get the opportunity to tap into what we have here, I just think that’s amazing and it goes to show what we have here is powerful. And what we need to do here is engage in what we have here and encourage what we have here. There should be none of us here going out of business. … We should enjoy the culture and the food and the things that we do have here and support the things that we have here, and that’s important. That’s how we keep our Lehigh Valley flowing and stuff like that.
“Cardi B found our little section of the world, and she had many places to go beyond that. The fact that she was able to come here … and while she was here, she got to enjoy a little piece of our history.”
While its 15 minutes of fame may have ended, Palmer Park Mall continues to welcome new tenants. Saavedra said guests can look forward to the painting and event studio Whoodle Works Studio opening this weekend, and the thrift store This, That & The Third Shop opening Oct. 1.
They join new tenants that opened over the summer, Total Wireless and the Soldierfit gym.
The one vacancy the mall is looking to fill, Saavedra added, is where Claire’s used to be.
