Trigger warning: This article references domestic violence.
Grammy Award-winning rapper Cardi B is no stranger to sharing her unfiltered thoughts online. She has used her platform to call out injustices on a wide range of issues, including health care, Donald Trump, and the U.S. government. She has also used social media to air out personal conflicts. But in one of her most recent livestreams, Cardi made some alarming allegations against her estranged husband Offset that, if true, may point to a pattern of domestic abuse.
On March 29, Cardi went live on X Spaces and accused Offset of stalking her, harassing her, and non-consensually distributing sexually explicit videos of the two of them to someone she’s currently seeing.
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“Every time he knows that I go out of town he harasses me,” she alleged on the livestream. "He leaves me voice notes trying to pull my self-esteem to the ground and I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of him and his girlfriend, playing games on my phone, leaving explicit voicemails on my phone.”
Cardi and Offset’s on-again, off-again relationship started in 2017, and after numerous separations, six years of marriage, and one previously-dropped divorce filing in 2020, Cardi most recently filed for divorce in July 2024. The two also have three children together, including a six-year-old, three-year-old, and an infant. While this isn’t the first time Cardi has taken to social media to call out Offset in public, this moment marks one of her most grave accusations against him. While she says that she has been quiet and keeping this all to herself over the past couple of months, she alleged that Offset threatened murder-suicide, which prompted her to reach out to Offset’s current girlfriend.
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"Even with Cardi’s net worth rumored to be well over $80 million, this is an example of how fame, money, and success don’t insulate you from being in an abusive relationship."
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"This guy is upset because I sent his girlfriend text messages of him begging me, saying he was going to take away his life," Cardi alleged in the livestream. “Mind you, he sent text messages to somebody I was dealing with of videos of me and him having sex. That’s the kind of shit that I was dealing with for the past two months.”
While neither Offset nor Cardi have commented publicly since Cardi’s March 29 livestream, the divorce proceedings are still ongoing. Social media users have shared their concern for the “Bodak Yellow” rapper and have left comments on posts related to allegations such as, “Girl, that’s domestic violence,” “I actually fear for her,” and “girl, get a restraining order,” with each comment garnering tens of thousands of likes in support.
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Domestic violence, as defined by the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
Even with Cardi’s net worth rumored to be well over $80 million, this is an example of how fame, money, and success don’t insulate you from being in an abusive relationship. Linda Lopez, a lawyer and senior deputy director of New York-based nonprofit Sanctuary for Families, notes that domestic violence permeates all socioeconomic and racial barriers, adding that women can find themselves in relationships where their vulnerabilities are used against them to instill fear concerning their careers, families, relationships, physical wellbeing, or death.
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"You can feel unsafe in your home or in your mansion if you're living with someone who's abusive and has threatened to harm you in specific, detailed ways."
Linda Lopez
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“Those fears don't change because you have fame, or resources, or you've reached a certain pinnacle in your career,” she tells Refinery29 Somos. “You can feel unsafe in your home or in your mansion if you're living with someone who's abusive and has threatened to harm you in specific, detailed ways.”
Cardi’s discomfort with Offset has been well-documented in years past. In 2018, she was visibly upset when Offset pulled a stunt at one of her career-defining headline shows by asking her to take him back — a move that fans called “manipulative” and “toxic.” In June 2023, Offset publicly said Cardi had cheated on him and later admitted he had lied about that. In a December 2023 Instagram livestream calling out Offset’s behavior, Cardi tearfully shared, “This motherfucker really likes to play games with me at my most vulnerable time, when I'm not the most confident, he likes to play games with me because he knows that I'm not an easy girl."
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Abusive behaviors can happen in any kind of relationship, Lopez notes, and are often performed under the guise of the abuser being loving, protective, and caring.
“The real intent is to isolate and to slowly chip away at the self-esteem of the other person and to put them in a situation where they fear for their safety,” she says.
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"The real intent is to isolate and to slowly chip away at the self-esteem of the other person and to put them in a situation where they fear for their safety."
Linda Lopez
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Lopez adds that behaviors like stalking, harassing, issuing threats of physical harm, and cyber sexual abuse involving sharing sexually explicit images or videos — which, even if taken consensually, sharing them without the consent of the victim is a nonconsensual act and therefore a crime — are all behaviors that are typically used by abusive people, a lot of time men, to control, harass, annoy, and menace their partners. When women try to leave or leave an abusive relationship, Lopez flags that it’s common for abusive behavior to escalate and intensify.
Anna Reyes, a New York-based licensed clinical social worker, wants women to remember: psychological harm is not an act of love. In Latine communities, for instance, it is often taught that jealousy, isolation, and control are signs of a loving partner. But Reyes notes that these harmful behaviors could actually be evidence of abuse. She says that any type of abuse, whether it be emotional, physical, financial, or sexual, is defined by one partner exerting control over the other. Actions such as name-calling, insulting, humiliating, and constant criticism are ways by which one partner makes the other feel small, worthless, and powerless, which opens the door for the perpetrator to exert control.
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Reyes also shares that while speaking out about their experiences can open up celebrities to criticism, shaming, and humiliation on the internet and in their industries, it also creates an opportunity for other women to feel seen and empowered
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"In Latine communities, for instance, it is often taught that jealousy, isolation, and control are signs of a loving partner. But Reyes notes that these harmful behaviors could actually be evidence of abuse."
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“I think it's important for young girls and women, especially Black and brown girls, to see role models who look like them and represent communities that they come from. That way, girls and women of color can identify with the role models they look up to and feel less alone in their experience,” Reyes says. “I also believe it's really important for survivors to see that even women with a ton of resources, wealth, and power have experienced abuse and come out the other side. It helps survivors understand that the abuse that they suffered is not their fault, and that this is an issue that touches women and girls across all levels of our socioeconomic spectrum.”
Lopez and Reyes both share that survivors of intimate partner violence should remember that whether they have been physically harmed or psychologically harmed, they are not responsible for someone else harming them.
“You have the power to rewrite your own story to interrupt patterns of intergenerational trauma, and though leaving domestic violence situations is an incredibly scary task, you are worth feeling supported, cared for, empowered and in control of your own life,” Reyes says.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224 for confidential support.
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