Cardi B responds to backlash over old inappropriate video: We all have a past that can't be changed

After an old footage of Cardi B admitting to “drugging men and robbing them” resurfaced online, the rapper has stepped up to defend her past. In a clip from the Instagram Live recorded three years ago, the rapper is seen confessing to luring men into hotels before robbing them. After horrified social media users responded to the 26-year-old star’s confession with the hashtag #SurvivingCardiB (in reference to the R Kelly documentary Surviving R. Kelly) Cardi took to Instagram to explain her actions. She captioned the long statement “All I can do now is be a better me for myself my family and my future.”

“I’m a part of a hip-hop culture where you can talk about where you come from, talk about the wrong things you had to do to get where you are. There are rappers that glorify murder, violence, drugs, and robbing. Crimes they feel they had to do to survive.’ She continued by adding she has never glorified the messages nor put them in her songs – because she’s ‘not proud’ of it. ‘I made the choices that I did at the same time because I had very limited options. I was blessed to have been able to rise from that but so many women have not,’ she writes. While the former stripper said she was not proud of her actions, she felt they were necessary at the time. “I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options. I was blessed to have been able to rise from that but so many women have not,” she said. “Whether or not they were poor choices at the time I did what I had to do to survive.” Cardi B, who is married to rapper Offset, with whom she shares 8-month-old daughter, Kulture, ended the statement with.“I have a past that I can’t change. We all do.”