Cardi B Slams ‘Grown-A** Men’ Betting on Her Downfall Following New Single Criticism
Cardi B has let it be known that she won’t stand for any “grown-ass” men throwing shade at her or the music she makes.
The Bronx hit-maker took to X Spaces this week to air her grievances following criticism of her recent Jay-Z sampling single, “Imaginary Playerz.” While she didn’t directly name anyone, she did mention “grown-ass men” who she believes are “betting” on her losing.
“For people to dog pile on me over one song,” she said. “And when it comes to dog piling, it’s not even just like, ‘Oh well, I don’t like this song,’ because if you don’t like this song, fine, but to come at the way I speak, to make narratives of how I think I am and who the fuck I think I am, to talk about every single piece of me, to bet on my downfall is crazy.”
Bardi continued: “There’s grown men that are practically betting for me to lose. Grown-ass men that I ain’t never did nothing to, betting on my downfall. And my thing is with these people, it just be like, when my record do good, when ‘Outside’ did good, people couldn’t believe it.”
“When I do good, the numbers ain’t real. When I do bad, my career is over,” she added. “It’s almost ridiculous.”
She then explained that she doesn’t release music because “it’s just not even worth your mental health, and I forgot how this feeling felt.”
Still, she promised her fans she would never give up. “If my career ever ends, it’s going to be because I died. It’s never going to be because an opinion or a muthafuckas got to me. You will never make me quit,” later adding that it’s not because she has to “prove a point to my haters,” but because she has to “prove it to myself.”
Earlier this week, Joe Budden discussed Cardi’s new song on the Joe Budden Podcast. Her single samples and borrows its name from Jay-Z’s 1997 classic, “Imaginary Players.”
“She shouldn’t do that again,” Budden said. “Don’t take any East Coast top three, four rapper beat, classic song, and redo that. … We gonna shout out the writers. The writers killed. This is not about the writers. … The bars are there. That wasn’t enough.”
He went on to call Cardi’s delivery “choppy” and “not smooth.”
Regardless of Budden’s take, “Imaginary Playerz” led to a boost in Hov’s streams, with his song spiking 305 percent between August 15 and 17.
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