The Grammy winner says she is “not proud” and that she has “never glorified” some of her actions while working as a stripper.
Cardi B has addressed a video which emerged showing her talking about drugging and robbing men during her time working as a stripper, saying she is “not proud” of her actions but she behaved that way “to survive”.
The Grammy-winning rapper could be seen discussing targeting men while working in New York in a three-year-old clip which resurfaced on social media at the weekend.
It led to the hashtag #SurvivingCardiB, a reference to the documentary Surviving R Kelly, as well as calls to boycott the star’s music.
In a post on Instagram, the 26-year-old has now responded to the controversy, saying she did things in her past that “I felt I needed to do to make a living”.
She said she never claimed “to be perfect or come from a perfect world” or have a “perfect past”, adding “I always speak my truth”.
While some rappers glorify “murder, violence, drugs and robbing” in their music, she said she had chosen not to.
“I never glorified the things I brought up in that live I never even put those things in my music because I’m not proud of it and feel a responsibility not to glorify it,” she wrote.
“I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options.”
Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, continued: “I was blessed to have been able to rise from that but so many women have not. Whether or not they were poor choices at the time I did what I had to do to survive.”
She also said that the men she spoke about were men she had dated and were “conscious and willing and aware”.
She finished by saying: “I have a past that I can’t change, we all do.”
The post was captioned: “All I can do now is be a better me for myself my family and my future.”
Cardi B made history earlier this year when she became the first solo woman to win the best rap album Grammy for her debut record, Invasion Of Privacy.
