Cardi B is looking ahead to 2020. As part of her cover for the September issue of Elle Magazine, the “WAP” rapper spoke to presidential nominee Joe Biden about what she hopes our country can look like in the future.
When Biden asked Cardi about her interest in the 2020 election, she responded, “I have a whole list of things that I want our next president to do for us. But first, I just want Trump out. I don’t want to be lied to—we’re dealing with a pandemic right now, and I just want answers.”
She went on to describe the key items on her list, namely: free Medicare, free college, and racial justice.
Biden assured Cardi that all the items from her list were possible, and went on to ask what her fans’ priorities were in the 2020 election. Cardi said they shared her concerns about Medicare and college tuition, but also brought up community concerns, asking Biden why some of the after-school programs she grew up with were no longer around.
Biden stressed the importance of those programs, adding, “I’m the guy that put in those after-school programs. I was able to get $20 billion [for] more boys and girls clubs. But what happened? Everything was getting better—this was when crime was going down—so [people said], ‘We don’t have to pay for this anymore.’ Because people didn’t want to pay the taxes for it.”
He went on to describe the difficulties he faced following the tragic loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972. “As a single dad when my wife and daughter got killed—I had two boys who survived the accident—I couldn’t afford child care. I didn’t have the money for someone to take care of my kids. Thank God, I had my sister and my brother and my mother, who helped me. But look at all the people who don’t have that kind of help.”
Cardi, who is a mother of two-year-old daughter Kulture, added, “Nobody is more motivated than a mom. Nobody wants to go hustle out there and get the money for the kid like a mother. [But] how are you supposed to do that when you probably don’t have a babysitter for your kid? Fortunately for me, I have my mom to help take care of my child, but a lot of people, their mom cannot retire and take care of the kids.”
Biden also told the “Hustlers” star that he plans to make college free for all families making less than $125,000, and community college free for everyone.
Cardi shared her own college experience, telling Biden, “I’m from New York, and when you’re in high school or middle school, they give you a free MetroCard for you to be able to get to your school, and they gave me free lunch. When I was in college, I didn’t get any more [free] transportation. So I had to get a job, because I needed $5 every single day to be able to go from Washington Heights to Chambers Street. And I had to feed myself. Sometimes I had to wait from 1 p.m. all the way to 9 p.m. to get home to eat. Because I couldn’t afford McDonald’s or any restaurants on my break. I was starving, and I felt so discouraged.”
Her college experience wasn’t the only thing Cardi opened up about. She also addressed racial injustice in the United States, telling Biden plainly what she wants. “…I feel like Black people, we’re not asking for sympathy, we’re not asking for charity—we are just asking for equality,” she said. “We are asking for fairness, and we are asking for justice. That is all. I feel like everything people are asking for is getting interpreted in a very different way. No, it’s simple: We just want justice. We want to feel like Americans.”
She made a personal connection, adding that she hopes she doesn’t need to fear for daughter Kulture’s safety. “Everybody just wants the best for themselves, their future, their kids’ future. I don’t want to [have] to tell my kid, ‘You have to be careful going to the store. Don’t wear a hoodie. Please don’t get stopped.’”
Both Biden and Cardi expressed their hope for young people to vote in this year’s election. “…I want the new generation, my fans, my people to go out and vote,” Cardi said. “I know we are so eager to make money, to look a certain way, to have style, celebrity gossip. And it’s like, why don’t we make a change for real and vote?”