MARIAH CAREY INTERVIEWS CARDI B AS SHE COVER'S INTERVIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2021 ISSUE.{PHOTOS}.

 

According to the margazine ''Only Cardi B has the right to doubt Cardi B. Her well-documented rise to superstardom is the product of grit, hustle, and the unapologetic nerve to just be herself. Her debut album, 2018’s Invasion of Privacy, was the result of talent that can’t be denied; an instant silencer of skeptics who believed her historic hit, “Bodak Yellow,” was a fluke. And her chart-topping single last summer, “WAP,” was proof that, at the age of 28, the Bronx native doesn’t just get the culture—she sets the culture. The woman born Belcalis Almánzar to Trinidadian and Dominican parents, who was a stripper by the age of 18 and a reality star by the time she was 23, has, in her short career, won a Grammy, broken five Guinness World Records, and sat down with a future president. And yet, as she puts the finishing touches on her highly anticipated sophomore album, the self-described “strip-club Mariah Carey” still needs a little pep talk. So we put her in touch with the real one. —BEN BARNA

MARIAH CAREY: Hi, darling.

CARDI B: Oh my gosh. I’m freaking out.

CAREY: Oh, stop. How are you?

CARDI B: I’m okay. Dealing with being locked down.

CAREY: What’s an average day like for Cardi B?

CARDI B: During the pandemic, the average day is me waking up with a lot of ideas in my head, so I’m always calling my team, trying to make whatever I have in my head happen, or I’m wondering about a business venture so I call my lawyer. And sometimes I go on Twitter, I go to blogs, I see what’s going on in the world. I try to stay off it most of the time, because sometimes it’s such a bad vibe. I usually wake up around noon and my daughter wakes up at 3:00 p.m., so I really have no time to just work, work, work, work.

CAREY: Do you have a glam team with you, or do you do it yourself? What’s been your way of preserving the Cardi B look while making sure everybody around you is safe?

CARDI B: Due to COVID, no lie, my team gets tested at least three or four times a week, no matter what we do. We always come up with things together. Let’s say I want to wear a shirt: I’ll send the shirt to my stylist and he will put an outfit together. Then I’ll hit up my hairstylist and we’ll decide what hairstyle goes with the fashion, because we don’t always have the same ideas. I was rehearsing for a music video and I had to be around dancers, and we were getting tested practically every single day. It’s so expensive on the budget.

CAREY: What do you think is your most down-to-earth trait?

CARDI B: I can vibe with anybody. I know hood chicks, I know college girls. I can relate to any type of vibe.

CAREY: I was able to write my memoir and got to tell my story from the time when I was a little girl, and that was the most important thing to me, because nobody knew that little girl. It was only once I became a well-known recording artist that people knew me and treated me differently, but I had an interesting, dysfunctional childhood. I was wondering, did you feel beautiful as a little girl?

CARDI B: It really depends.x

CAREY: I know that I didn’t, for my own reasons. When you were little, did you always know, “I stand out from the crowd. Different people notice me, I feel beautiful”? Or did you feel like an outsider?

CARDI B: Well, I’m from New York, right? And New York is a melting pot, especially where I grew up in the Bronx. I’m Trini and I’m Dominican, and there’s a lot of Dominicans that look a certain type of way. They have soft, pretty, curly hair. Growing up, guys would ask me weird questions like, “If you’re Dominican, why is your hair so nappy?” I used to dye my hair,  and people used to be like, “Oh, your hair’s so crunchy.” And it 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: I’ve had very similar situations, with the hair. The hair is always a thing. As a matter of fact, we’re about to deal with my hair right now, because it looks quite disgusting. Now, you have access to every great hairdresser in the world, to makeup artists and stylists, the whole glam team and designers. You’re like a real-life princess. Coming from the childhood that you came from, and the experiences that you just talked me through, does it feel like, “Wow, I hope those same people who told me I had a flat ass and nappy hair are looking at this now”? Do you feel vindicated?

CARDI B: I feel so vindicated. 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''.Read the rest on their weebsite.More photos below.