Cardi B has defended Tyla
Cardi B is clapping back at online critics who have been coming at South African singer Tyla. Cardi, 32, on a recent X Spaces, brought up the online vitriol directed toward Tyla, 23, when she was talking about how social media has made it difficult for celebrities to live their lives without coming under scrutiny, Billboard reported.
“Look at Tyla,” the rapper, born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, said after she reflected on one of her pregnancies and the body-shaming directed at her during that period. “People have been dragging the sh– out of Tyla and it’s, like, the girl doesn’t even f—ing address or talk about anything.”
The WAP rapper continued: “I’m starting to feel that people just don’t like celebrities. It’s like the only way that people like celebrities [is] if you don’t f—ing say anything at all. And they beat your energy and they beat your confidence, they beat you to the f—ing ground.”
Cardi also stated that though she couldn’t tell the genesis of the hate, she had had enough of seeing “thousands of videos of people talking sh– about you.”
“To be honest with you, I don’t even know the hate about it because I never really got into the details of what the real hardcore thing is,” the Up rapper said about Tyla. “However, all I know is every single time I scroll down on my TikTok, there’s a video of her and people are talking sh–. And it’s like, goddamn, what do you want her to f—ing do, cut her f—ing veins? Like, enough. Enough. I really think that’s what ya be wanting.”
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Tyla came under online scrutiny after she described herself as a “Coloured South African” in a 2020 video that later resurfaced. The Breakfast Club’s co-host Charlamagne Tha God revisited that topic when the Grammy winner appeared on the show in 2024, asking her to explain why she describes herself as a “Coloured” person. Tyla later went silent before her rep asked for that question to be skipped.
Tyla’s identity particularly came under scrutiny after she penetrated the American market. Per the BBC, using the word “Coloured” to describe a person is regarded as a slur by Americans, though that is not the case in her native South Africa. And the musician using that word to describe herself made a section of Americans suggest she was denying her Blackness.
“That [controversy] was really confusing for me,” the 23-year-old said in a recent feature on Variety. “I understood both sides of the story, but I was left asking, ‘OK, but what do I do now?’ When who you are is challenged, especially when it’s all you’ve ever known, it shakes you. You want to stand your ground, because if you don’t, someone else will try to define it for you.”
In a 2025 British Vogue cover story, the Is It singer also touched on her decision to remain mum when Charlamagne asked about her identity.
“Me choosing not to say anything, I’m happy that I didn’t,” Tyla said. “I didn’t want to explain my culture and something that is really important to me on a platform that is just going to be purposefully misconstrued. I’ve explained it a lot of times before, but people took that and put words in my mouth. They said a whole bunch of things that I never said and ran with it.”
Tyla also touched on how the word “Coloured” has different views in her native South Africa and America. She said she ended up having to question her identity when she came to America.
“If people really searched, they’ll see that in South Africa we had a lot of segregation,” Tyla explained. “It was bad for a lot of us. They just classified us. And that just so happens to be the name that the white people called us. They chose to call people who were mixed ‘coloured’.
“And I’m not gonna lie, it was hard because all my life, obviously, I knew ‘I’m Black’ but also knew that ‘I’m coloured’. So, when I went to America and people were like, ‘You can’t say that!’ I was in a position where I was like, ‘Oh, so what do I do? What am I then?” she said.
