Cardi B has been laying relatively low over the past nine months. The coronavirus pandemic and inability to tour have made an artist’s visibility that much more scarce. But that changed on Friday (August 7) when Cardi made her triumphant return with “WAP” featuring Megan Thee Stallion, her first new single and video since May 2019.
With all of Cardi’s success over the past couple of years, there was a time when she didn’t feel welcomed in the music industry. During a recent video interview with Beats 1, she expounded on the topic and confessed it’s been a bumpy road.
“When I first started doing music and everything, my feelings got hurt like a lot of times,” she explained. “I felt people just kept denying me in my face ’cause my manager at the time, they said you have to be more friendly. You got to go out more. And even when I was being friendly to other artists — and I’m not talking about female artists, just being more mix-y in the industry — I just felt I’m shaking hands with everybody, but nobody want to do a fucking feature with me.
“I was like, ‘What the hell?’ And then my husband, he was the one that gave me a feature. And, I still didn’t blow up as crazy as I thought I was going to blow up. But like I said, once you get up there, oh people gonna to be on it and you can’t take it personal.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cardi broached the subject of women rappers always being pitted against each other and insisted there was room for everybody.
“I feel like people be wanting to put female artists against each other,” she said. “It’s the people that be trying to do that shit. Every single time I feel like there’s a female artist that’s coming up, coming up, coming up and it’s getting they mainstream moment, I always see like little slick comments like, ‘Oh, they taking over your spot. They taking over this. They taking over that.’ And it just makes me feel like, ‘Damn, why it had to be like that?’ Because I actually like shorty music a lot.”
Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion Deliver Bootylicious ‘WAP’ Video Featuring Kylie Jenner
She continued, “There’s a lot of female artists right now and all of them are a little bit different from me. And it’s just, I feel like there should be different female artists that everybody could relate to somebody. Somebody might relate to me or my past. I was a dancer and I was in the streets and shit. But then somebody could relate to another female artist that was a school girl. They been in school or something.
“Some female artists are more tomboyish than the other. Maybe tomboyish girls could relate to that type of person. And some female artists could relate to the girly type of person. And some females can relate to the popping pussy, type of female artists. So I feel like there should be variety. Because people need somebody to relate to or to gravitate to more. But people be trying to make that beef.”
Check out the full interview here.