Cardi B Says Artists Downplay the Grammys Despite ‘Chasing’ the Award Themselves

Cardi B has words for anyone who wants to downplay her Grammy win.

The rapper addressed the tendency for artists to minimize the prestigious award while speaking to Billboard’s Carl Lamarre.

“Everybody always wants to downplay it but everybody wants one,” Cardi said at the nine-minute mark in the video linked above. “Every year people want to downplay the Grammys, but every year they submit their music. So it’s like, aight, what’s what?”

Cardi also explained that there were “so many artists” who have earned nods without having a song chart on the Hot 100.

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One of those nominated artists includes D Smoke, who was a contestant on the first season of Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow.

“A lot of people will downplay it like, ‘Oh, it’s a label thing,’ but it’s art,” she added. “It’s a lot of artists that people probably never heard of that still get nominated. It’s about the passion.

“I feel like the people from the board could tell when somebody put passion, put pain, put time on their shit,” Cardi continued. “When I submit my album, when I submit my records: if I lose, I lose. And if I lose, I lose—it is what it is. But I’m not going to fucking hate on it … I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, that don’t mean something.’ It do mean something. That’s why y’all chase it … Stop playing.”

Lamarre spoke to Cardi about Doechii’s win for Best Rap Album earlier this year, making her the third-ever female artist to win the award after Cardi herself in 2019 for Invasion of Privacy and Lauryn Hill (with the Fugees) in 1997 for The Score.

Cardi recalled that she wasn’t able to speak with the “Denial is a River” rapper because Doechii and her mother were “very emotional backstage” immediately following the win.

Cardi could relate from her own experience with winning.

“It meant so much to me because it was just, like, in such a time that I didn’t know the certainty of my career and I didn’t know nothing about my career,” Cardi said, describing a time where she didn’t understand the industry and was navigating pregnancy, long hours in the studio, illness, new managers, and litigation.

Despite those challenges, Cardi says she remained “dedicated.”

“Yes, I sold a lot of records and yes, I had a lot of hit records—and then being recognized for it with the most [prestigious] award? You can never take that from me,” she said.

Cardi B’s sophomore album Am I the Drama? drops on Sept. 19.