NEW YORK — With applications for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free child care program for 2-year-olds opening in June, the social media-friendly mayor announced Friday he is turning to Bronx-born rapper Cardi B to help promote it.

“As Cardi B says: ‘I can get ’em both. I don’t wanna choose,’” Mamdani said in a statement, quoting the debut single, “Bodak Yellow,” that made her a household name.

“For too long, families have been forced to choose between affordable care and staying in the city they love. Now, they can have both — free care in the greatest city in the world.”

To announce the enrollment period, Mamdani released a short-form video on social media with Cardi B launching a 2-K jingle competition, where people can write an original 15 to 30-second ditty urging parents to apply.

A zealous use of viral videos helped catapult Mamdani from a back-of-the-pack, virtually unknown Queens assemblyman, to the winner of last year’s election. Friday’s post was the latest example of how he is using social media to help promote universal child care and to govern more broadly.

For the 2-K jingle competition, a panel of judges, including Cardi B, will review submissions, before voting opens up to the general public, according to a news release. The winning jingle will become the “official 2-K theme” and play on the radio.

“We had a question for you,” Mamdani asks Cardi B in the video. “We’re gonna have a competition to create a jingle. New Yorkers are gonna submit to their best jingle. And we wanted to know you would help judge that competition?”

Tapping the entertainer’s star power hasn’t always gone well for city officials, though. Then-NYPD Chief of Training Juanita Holmes in 2023 was bounced from her job after inviting Cardi B to a NYPD academy event where she talked and danced with young girls as part of her court-ordered community service for her role in a Queens strip club assault in 2018.

2-K is launching in school districts 6, 10, 18, 23 and 27, with the goal of expanding citywide by the end of Mamdani’s first term. Gov. Kathy Hochul earmarked $73 million and $425 million for 2-K in its first and second years, when the program is set to grow to 12,000 kids for the 2027-28 school year.