Cardi B
Flo NgalaCardi B recently addressed why she stopped being so vocal about politics on social media.
On Thursday, a Twitter user directly questioned Cardi about why the rapper, who has been a common target of many conservative Republication politicians and commentators and was never shy about taking shots back, stopped using her platform to talk politics. "@iamcardib Used to TALK ABOUT POLITICS & POLITICAL MATTERS! WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT ?!??"
"I was tired of getting bullied by the republicans and also getting bashed by the same people I was standing up for," she responded.
The 29-year-old MC received a lot of flak when she released her sexually explicit Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 "WAP" collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion. And Cardi aptly described the song as "the one that had Republicans crying on Fox News about it." Ben Shapiro read the uncomfortably censored lyrics on his own show shortly after the single dropped in August 2020 and sarcastically analyzed what part the song plays in the feminist movement.
And when Cardi interviewed now-President Joe Biden as well as former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Shapiro brought his fellow conservative commentator Candace Owens onto his show, who claimed the tactics were "pandering" to Black American voters by appealing to their music tastes and later sparked her own political debate with Cardi. The Invasion of Privacy Grammy winner also fired back at former Republican congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine after she made an unflattering comparison between Cardi and Melania Trump.
In her cover story last year when she was crowned Billboard's Woman of the Year, Cardi reacted to seeing her and Meg's fans sing "WAP" outside the White House the day that Biden's win was announced last fall. "So many Republicans -- not just any Republicans that got an Instagram following, but a lot of Republicans that got blue checks [on Twitter] and millions of followers, [like Ben] Shapiro, Candace Owens, Tomi Lahren -- were talking so much crap about 'WAP,'" she said at the time. "So it was just a victory for me seeing people celebrating Biden’s win with my and Megan’s song. Power of the p---y, ya heard?!"
Cardi also opened up about how she wasn't just "bullied by the republications" but also harassed by Trump supporters during an Instagram Live video, to the point where one teenage boy tried doxing her home. "They be degrading me. They be making fun of me. I ignore them. I don't give a f---," she said. "Sh-- gets so intense that a Trump supporter posted my address and encouraged people to dox my home, to put my house on fire. I literally hired a private investigator, and serve them with a warrant and arrest this boy."
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
