Cardi B Has Opened Up About The Pressure To Finish Her Album Before Her Pregnancy Started Showing

The entire time Cardi B was recording her Grammy-award winning debut album, Invasion of Privacy, she was pregnant. This might not sound like a big deal, after all, most women work throughout pregnancy, but in a sexist music industry so focused on image, the fact that Cardi was pregnant just as her long-awaited success was at its inception made it one. And now, she’s opened up about the toll that took on her.

Telling her fans on Twitter about the recording process, she revealed that when she started studio sessions in late 2017 – around the same time she got pregnant - all she could think about was finishing her album before her pregnancy bump became obvious.

Talking about her time in the studio, she said that despite ‘throwing up’, being ‘drowsy’ and having ‘terrible colds’, she was ‘in a rush to finish it so [she] can start doing music videos before [she] started showing.’

‘I spent 24 hours for months sleeping on a couch with my pregnant depressed ass in a studio,’ she tweeted, ‘all I can think about was ...everybody is disappointed in me, am I still going to have a career after this baby ? Is this album going to make me or break me ? I need to finish before I start showing.’

Feeling it was essential to relocate from New York to allow her to hide her pregnancy, she revealed her husband, fellow rapper Offset, took the place of her recently departed manager in organising the move.

‘I had to get my husband to talk to my label cause I never had a relationship with them,’ she said, ‘so we all came together to relocate me to Atlanta and Miami to finish my album before my stomach start showing.’

Eventually revealing her pregnancy in April 2018, one month before her album release, Cardi had already been showing for several months at this point. And even at that time, she spoke about how stressed she felt that her career would end as soon as she announced her pregnancy.

‘A lot of successful women have kids, and a lot of successful artists have kids, but not at the peak of their career,’ she told Rolling Stone in June last year, later telling the Breakfast Club, ‘I see a lot of women online, like, “I feel sorry for you. Your career is over”.’

It’s an unsurprising fear, really, because even with all Cardi’s talent, connections and resources, there is no doubt that some women’s careers take a hit after having a child. For most of us, that might be because of poorly paid parental leave and maternity discrimination, but even for the wealthy and famous, prejudice towards mothers can impact every career decision made for them by the record labels and management that handle their business.

Now however, that experience and pressure has made Cardi feel more deserving of her success than ever – knowing that she went through so much to get such a critically acclaimed album out.

‘When I won a Grammy for it, I didn’t have no words to say but when I went home I started reminiscing on what I went through during that period I was like YEA BITCH YOU DESERVE THIS SHIT,’ she said, ‘and until this day my shit still charting.’

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