Cardi B Said She Always Wanted to Be the Person Her Mom ‘Didn’t Let’ Her Be
Cardi B has a good relationship with her mother now that she is an adult. They clashed a bit more in her adolescence, though. Cardi said her mother wanted to protect her as much as possible. She pushed back and wanted to be everything her mother didn’t want her to be.
Cardi B said she wanted to be a different person than her mom wanted her to be
While growing up, Cardi said that though she heard rap music from her neighbors, her mother never let her listen to it at home.
“My mom always wanted to keep me really childlike,” she told Mariah Carey in a conversation for Interview Magazine. “She wanted me to listen to Barney and Disney music, so I was only interested in Barney and Disney.”
When she discovered other artists, though, she wanted to do everything she could to emulate them.
“We used to go to my grandmother’s house, where they would always play BET and s***,” she said. “When I saw Missy Elliott take off her head in a music video, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so strange. I want to do that when I grow up.’ And then I started seeing girls like Trina, and I was like, ‘She’s so sexy. I want to talk like that when I grow up.’”
Suddenly, she wanted to dress and behave in a way her mother may not have liked.
“I always wanted to be what my mom didn’t let me be,” she said. “I wanted to wear small shirts and have my belly out and wear little kitty heels.”
Cardi B has come to understand her mom’s concerns for her
Cardi said her mother has accepted her for the way she is now. The rapper understands that her mother’s concerns were for her own good while she was growing up.
“When I told my mom I was a stripper that really bothered her for a minute,” she said. “But now when she hears me saying grown s***, I don’t think she gives a f*** anymore. I think she didn’t want me to grow up so fast, because the kids around my neighborhood grew up fast.”
She wanted to protect her daughter from things she was already being exposed to.
“That’s why my mom was always scared,” she said. “There was teen pregnancy all around us. She was just being a mom.”
Both her parents have helped her with her children
Now that Cardi has children of her own, she relies on her parents for help with them. Cardi said her mother was a great help when she had her first child.
“My mom has not left my side not one time,” she said in an Instagram video posted shortly after her daughter Kulture’s birth. “This is her first grandkid. The last time she had a kid was 22 years ago, so this is all new to her again just as it is new to me.”
She felt grateful for the help both her parents were able to provide her.
“My dad, you know, he’s just running errands for me in New York,” she said. “To have that extra hand I’m just really grateful … I’m just sitting here like God, thank you so much for these great amazing parents.”
