Source: Francois Durand / Getty
With a Grammy award underneath her belt and two diamond-certified singles, there’s no doubt in mind that Cardi B is taking home a big paycheck, and according to the Bronx rapper, that money doesn’t even include what she’s able to command from live performances.
Cardi’s money-making moves were the topic of discourse on Feb. 21, after a few Twitter critics argued that the rapper couldn’t claim superstar status.
In true Bardi fashion, the “Bodak Yellow” hitmaker barked back at the naysayers by tweeting a screenshot of a pending offer to perform two shows for a whopping total of $2.3 million. The star blurred out who made the proposal but judging by the conversation, it appeared to be for a festival gig in July.
“1,150,000 per show,” the text from Cardi’s teammate read. “This is for the [headline] position each night.”
It didn’t seem like Cardi was too impressed with the offer, because the rapper replied back with a modest, “I guess.”
The 29-year-old mother of two flexed about the deal in her caption, writing to her haters:
“Over a M a show wit 1 album. BIG SUPERSTAR are you dumb? Waiting on my agent got like 3 overseas one for 2 Ms.”
However, the tweet was quickly taken down.
“My music reps just call me to take it down …..😕…..I can’t never have fun,” she wrote. Thankfully Rap-Up was able to catch a screenshot of the deleted tweet.
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While Cardi is certainly raking in the dough from her music career and bountiful business endeavors, there’s still a massive pay disparity between male and female performers in the industry. The large gap was made apparent last year when Variety published its list of the highest-paid musicians. According to the publication’s stats, rappers such as Jay-Z and Kanye West were able to pull in $470 million and $250 million respectively from their music and business ventures in 2021. Variety noted that last year, West amassed a ton of wealth from his growing Yeezy shoe empire while Jay-Z celebrated a big payout from selling half of his Armand de Brignac champagne company to LVMH. Overall, the list was largely dominated by white male musicians like Paul Simon who pulled in $260 million last year, and Bruce Springsteen, who came in at number one, generating an outstanding $550 million from touring and publishing deals.
In 2019, Forbes listed Cardi as one of the highest-paid rappers. The star reportedly made $28 million that year, though she argued that the numbers were off on Twitter. To put things into perspective, Nicki Minaj, who was also featured on the list, hovered one notch above Cardi at $29 million. That’s a 500 million dollar difference in comparison to Bruce Springsteen. It’s a sour reminder that even with power and fame, female artists are not excluded from the overall arching gender pay gap that continues to plague women workers, no matter what socio-economic status.
According to a 2020 Pew Research analysis, women ages 25 to 34 earned 93 cents for every dollar a man in the same age group earned on average. The gap continues to persist for a number of reasons including educational attainment, occupational segregation and some argue racial discrimination. Black Women are hit hardest by the glaring pay disparity issue. As MADAMENOIRE previously reported, Black women make 63 cents for every dollar a white male makes. This equals a wage gap of “$2,009 a month, $24,110 a year, and $964,400 over a 40-year career” span, CNBC noted.
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