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.