Despite what her sexually-explicit lyrics and late-night Twitter rants might have you believe, Cardi B confessed that she isn’t quite as bold and brash as she appears on screen.
The rapper spoke with Mariah Carey for her new Interview magazine cover story revealing that despite being a bonafide famous person, she still gets very nervous around famous people. “A lot of celebrities invite me to places, but I’m really shy,” Cardi admitted to the pop star. “We’re doing this over the phone, but if it was in person, I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eyes. That’s how nervous I get around celebrities. And sometimes my head starts talking, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I look stupid, I feel stupid, I’m dumb.’” But Carey assured her with a laugh, “We all do that.”
Cardi, “I don’t want to get close to a celebrity and feel like we have a connection, and then out of nowhere they do some funny shit and disappoint me. I’ve always had the same friends. I’m very loyal. If I’m your friend, I’m going to always ride hard for you. But if you don’t ride hard for me or you do some funny shit, I’m going to feel a certain type of way. My husband [Offset] always tries to tell me, ‘You can’t think like that because you’ve got to network and this is not real life. You got to understand that.’” Cardi explained that’s also why she doesn’t work with more artists, saying, “If I love their music, I don’t want to meet them because I don’t want to hate them. I’d rather just not know them at all and love them then meet them and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, this person’s a weirdo.’”
The rapper also opened up about the insecurities she had as a young girl about her appearance, explaining that people’s comments about her hair “would make me feel so weird. I was also really skinny when I was younger, and in the Bronx, it’s about being thick and having an ass, so young boys would be like, ‘Look at your flat ass. You ain’t got no titties.’ And it would make me feel so ugly and undeveloped.” Carey asked her if she feels vindicated about her appearance now that she’s a star with access to the best glam teams in the world. “I feel so vindicated,” Cardi replied. “Even when I was 18 and became a dancer, I had enough money to afford to buy boobs, so every insecurity that I felt about my breasts was gone. When I was 20, I went to the urban strip club, and in the urban strip clubs, you had to have a big butt. So I felt insecure about that. It took me back to high school. So I got my ass done. And then I felt super confident.”
The duo also teased the possibility of working together in the future on both a hit song—and maybe even a bra collection. Carey asked Cardi what her favorite bra is, prompting the rapper to reply, “I don’t know because I’m not really a bra person.” This gave Carey a million-dollar business idea: “We need to do a bra line. We need that specialty line.” Towards the end of their conversation, Carey says again, “We’re going to do our bra line, and one of these days, can we do a song together?” Cardi agreed, “I would love that. I would love to do a record that touches souls. You had me heartbroken when I was 11 years old and I didn’t even have a boyfriend.”
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