Cardi B is back with her first solo report in three years, and her new music got here with somewhat of shade towards her longtime rival Nicki Minaj.
Cardi, 31, kicked off her go back to the rap international on Friday, March 1, freeing “Like What (Freestyle),” a song that samples Missy Elliott’s 1999 hit “She’s a Bitch.” Cardi made use of the pattern in additional ways than one, rapping, “First, that whinge hate me, then this bitch hate me / And come what may, they link up and they grow to be friends, like, how?”
Fans quickly pounced at the line, presuming it was once about JT of the rap duo City Girls. Cardi joined JT, 31, and Yung Miami for 2018’s “Twerk,” however the two had a public falling-out. Cardi referred to JT as Minaj’s “lap dog” in 2022, whilst JT informed Cardi to “go fetch a real talent.”
Cardi seemingly made a more direct connection with Minaj, 41, later in the verse. “You dumb, you gradual, you wildin’ / Got your first pair of Ricks [Rick Owens shoes], now you stylin’?” she raps. “Everything you were given, I had five years earlier than / I put it at the ‘Gram (haha, haha) ‘fore it even hit the store, look.”
Coincidentally, Minaj got her first solo Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 song with “Super Freaky Girl” in 2022, 5 years after Cardi crowned the charts with “Bodak Yellow.” Minaj crowned the Hot 100 previously with “Say So” with Doja Cat and “Trollz” with 6ix9ine. Cardi has four Hot 100 No. 1 hits in addition to “Bodak Yellow”: “I Like It” with Bad Bunny and J Balvin, “Girls Like You” with Maroon 5, “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion and her solo file “Up.”
“Like What (Freestyle)” additionally has moments of love in it. In the accompanying video, directed by means of Cardi’s estranged husband, Offset, she wearing a chinchilla coat over a skimpy bikini for one scene. Fans temporarily saw it as a loving homage to Lil’ Kim‘s outfit in her “Came Back for You” tune video in 2003.
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At the tip of the “Like What” video, Cardi teased that this is “only the start,” giving fanatics hope that her long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Invasion of Privacy will in the end arrive. Cardi has been teasing her sophomore album for years. In August 2023, she advised Vogue México y Latinoamérica that she would “put out my next solo single” whilst putting the finishing touches at the album.
“Everyone at all times tells me I will have to put the document out now,” she said, “but I at all times allow them to know I’m no longer going to wait long in any case these singles. So stay tuned as it’s coming out very soon.”
One month later, while talking with radio persona Ebro Darden, Cardi explained that she felt anxiety to compare the good fortune of Invasion of Privacy, and that has delayed its unlock. “For this album, I’m just conserving it as a result of I think like I’m missing a few issues,” she said. “Then on most sensible of that, the whole lot just needs to be, like, very best from the entirety because I think like persons are expecting such a lot.”
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