Cardi B - Uncensored And Unstoppable

The stripper-turned- Internet sensation turned-recording star has risen to fame with a brand of unfiltered real talk that’s rare, even in the rap world. In this COSMO exclusive, she sounds off about the #MeToo movement, infidelity, and why she’s done changing for anyone. Warning: this interview should come with an ‘explicit’ label…

- Jazmine Hughes

She arrives at lunch with a yellow hoodie drawn tightly around her face and a fur coat skimming her ankles. Her manner is subdued. I stick out my hand to shake hers, and she gingerly embraces me instead, like someone forced to hug her grandma. This isn’t the outlandish personality her more-than-20-million Instagram followers have come to expect, or the character we know from her eyebrow-raising viral advice videos. (‘If the bitch that used to f*ck your man be doing sh*t, trying to be petty, don’t be angry with your man about that.’) This is a woman with something on her mind.

Later today, Cardi (aka Bacardi, Bardi B) will head to Los Angeles, where, she reports, the food is terrible. She brightens for a moment when her mother calls – ‘Hello, motherly love!’ she coos into the phone – then returns to her gloom. She’d spent the previous night online, defending herself in order to be herself: the brazen girl from the Bronx who may as well come with her own parental-advisory sticker. And right now, she’s tired by the thought of having to respond to all the questions, all the criticism, again today and tomorrow and the next day … and perhaps for the rest of her career.

It’s a lot to take in, her meteoric rise. First came a two-season stint on reality TV show Love & Hip Hop, where her ballsy, uninhibited rants secured her fan-favourite status. Then Bodak Yellow arrived. The addictive song bumped out of every club stereo and car radio, making Cardi the first solo female rapper to top the Billboard 100 in 19 years (she knocked Taylor Swift off the number-one spot). Earlier this year, she landed on the Spotify Top 50 list, occupying three out of the four most popular songs in the country: a duo with Bruno Mars on Finesse, her own Bartier Cardi and the G-Eazy collaboration