Cardi B may be one of Hip Hop’s biggest-selling stars, but even she isn’t immune to the effects of criticism.
In a vulnerable interview with Rolling Stone, whose June 2024 issue she covers, Cardi admitted to being reduced to tears over negative comments online.
“Like yesterday, I was scrolling through TikTok and a bitch made me cry,” she said. “She was just like, ‘She has got to give it up. She’s better off being an influencer. You was cosplaying being a rapper. Because you don’t take it seriously. That’s why you don’t put out your music.’
“And it’s like, I take my music so fucking seriously that that’s why I don’t put it out. Because if it’s not perfect to my ear, if every fucking word doesn’t sound like it’s pronounced right, if the beat is overpowering the words or the words is overpowering the beat, I don’t want to put it out.”
The Bronx rap star added: “When you give so much and somebody just drags it down, like you’re just playing with your pussy all day, just watching Netflix all fucking day long, it’s very hurtful.”
The cover story delves deeper into the long wait for Cardi’s long-awaited new album and the perfectionist tendencies that are partly behind the delay.
View this post on Instagram
It reads: “More than anything, Cardi wants to prove once and for all that the past six years haven’t happened by luck or hype, and she’s working painstakingly, anxiety-inducingly hard to do so. After I leave the studio, Cardi needs to pore over her unmixed and unmastered songs.
“When I see her next, in New York, I watch her punch in lines dozens of times, fixating on her every tic, pitch, inflection, accent. She surveys confidants from all walks of life — ‘I have friends that are scammers, and I got bitches that work a 9-to-5’ — on her works in progress. She endures the punishment of being away from home.”
Although Cardi recently declared that she won’t be releasing her new album in 2024, a rep confirmed to Rolling Stone that the project will, in fact, be dropping this year — if all goes according to plan.
In a since-deleted tweet earlier this week, the “Bodak Yellow” hitmaker was replying to a fan who applauded her transparency on social media and wrote: “Exactly and I tell myself this all the time..and I hate that I fall back and start interacting again and it bites me in the ass.
“anyway NO album this year I don’t care I’m relaxing this year.. Dropping these features I already committed to and traveling and enjoying my summer.”
Cardi had previously assured fans that the follow-up to her record-breaking debut Invasion of Privacy, which arrived back in 2018, would be coming in 2024.
“I promise y’all this year: I’m not letting my anxiety, I’m not letting what haters say, I’m not letting what fans say… If I do a song, Imma just fuckin’ drop it,” she said in an Instagram video in March.
“Well, I got no choice, because I’m dropping my album this year, so stay tuned for the announcement.”
