On Tuesday (September 12), Cardi B was in attendance at MTV’s Video Music Awards in Newark, New Jersey. There, she not only performed her new hit single, “Bongos,” with Megan Thee Stallion, but she also gave a thoughtful quote about hip-hop’s 50th anniversary during a pre-show interview.
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“Hip-hop means everything to me. It’s the genre that I relate to the most… Hip-hop was made to talk about our struggles, to talk about our pains, to talk about things that happened in the Bronx. Hip-hop was created in the Bronx, by the way. My life. My culture. The Bronx, where I’m from. So it just means everything to me and of course, without hip-hop, I wouldn’t be here.”
When the clip of this interview made its way to social media, though, users argued that her true culture is not actually hip-hop, considering she has more Latinx roots than Black. She disputed this in the comments of a post made by a blog named The Neighborhood Talk, which included a video of her VMA interview.
“Ya just be wanting to disagree with everything I say but facts are facts like google it,” she wrote. “Where did hop hop start at.. THE BRONX!!! Where I’m from? Not the Caribbean island Hip hop came from talking about the struggle and that’s something I def lived so how that’s not my culture??? How can you tell me what I do or what I lived.. culture is literally the environment of what you came up in.”
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Next, though, Neighborhood Talk followers noted Cardi’s history of employing writers to craft her raps for her, which she has often been criticized for in the past. In the comments of another post made by the same Instagram page, she explained that having other writers is a common trend in the music industry.
“I started music before [Love & Hip-Hop] and wrote about MY struggles and life as a dancer go listen to them mixtapes also I went to school for musical theatre and technology,” she said. “Just because somebody might help me with a hook means nothing. Look at all ya fav artists credits they all do receive some type of help.”
Check out the two posts containing Cardi’s comments below.
Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images
