Cardi B Thanks Fan For Defending Her Accent: ‘I Will Never Change The Way I Talk’
This week, Cardi B, 31, took to X to clap back at people who criticize the way she speaks.
The “WAP” rapper has been vocal in the past about staying true to herself, calling it the secret to her success. “A lot of people always talking about how I talk… I have a very deep accent, and I started feeling real insecure about it,” she once told Reebok. “But it’s like, ‘Nah, forget it.’ I gotta be real with myself all the time. That’s what I gotta do to stay me.”
Now, the New York-born, Dominican-Trinidadian star shows her stance hasn’t changed. As she put it to fans this week: “I will never change the way I talk.”
Cardi B thanked a fan for “defending” her speech, calling it a “multimillion dollar accent”
The rapper responded to a fan on X who wondered, “At what point does making fun of Cardi B’s speech patterns become racist[?]” Cardi B replied, “[Aw] thanks for defending me. F**k them.”
“I will never change the way I talk… I became famous from that just being myself,” she continued. “Then I started making music and became a millionaire out of it.” Later, Cardi B added a gem that’s ingrained in our brains now: “This is a multimillion dollar accent [baby] OKKKKRRR.” Did she lie, though?
In April, Cardi B also aired her thoughts on people who have “talked sh*t about [her] accent” since she became famous. In a heated X exchange with influencer Raymonte, she wrote, “When I became famous people said I’m ghetto, talked s**t about my accent, call me dumb because the way I speak.”
The rapper explained her disappointment at people who criticize the way she speaks because of where she grew up. “To this day, no matter what I accomplished, I still get called a stripper all because I’m from the ghetto,” she described. “People misinterpret me because apparently I’m loud and ghetto to this day.”
That exchange, as well as Cardi B’s recent clap back, may intersect with some people’s viewpoints on the rapper’s Latinidad. During her conversation with Raymonte, Cardi B said that he called her “a Mexican” in private messages. Later, she clarified that she just wanted people to get her nationality right. “You’re not going to keep erasing my nationality,” the rapper replied in a video. “Yeah I’m going to say something about it, because that’s not my nationality. That’s not what I am.”
Now, recent controversy over her “speech patterns” or accent may stem from her South Bronx upbringing and Dominican-Trinidadian heritage.
As one X user put it, “Cardi is genuinely one of the smartest celebrities in my opinion, but ya’ll dismiss everything she says [because] of her accent [and] delivery.”
Another X user says Cardi B’s accent “sounds like home” to them, noting, “It’s actually so Highbridge, South Bronx neighborhood] it’s not even funny.”
And now that we’re talking accents, here’s a snippet of Cardi B’s Dominican accent in Spanish:
