Winners are grinners, and, right now, Cardi B can smile all she wants.
The chart-topping hip-hop star this week scored another hit, this time in court, when jurors sided with Cardi B in a defamation case against YouTuber Tasha K (real name Latasha Kebe).
The hits kept coming when jurors tacked on another $1.5 million in punitive damages on Tuesday (Jan. 25) and ordered the blogger to repay the star’s $1.3 million legal bill, meaning Tasha K and her company are facing nearly $3 million in penalties.
Cardi (whose real name is Belcalis Almánzar) posted a vague tweet, which has her fans smiling.
“I need a chat with Megan Markle,” she wrote, a reference to Meghan Markle, the actress and member of the British royal family who last year won her own privacy suit against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday.
I need a chat with Megan Markle.
— Cardi B (@iamcardib) January 26, 2022
In an usual twist to that high-profile case, a written court order by appeal judges detailed some of the financial settlement, including a sum of just £1 for “nominal damages”.
Cardi B sued Tasha K in 2019 over dozens of videos that contained disturbing claims about the rapper. When the trial kicked off Jan. 10 in Georgia federal court, Cardi B testified that she felt “suicidal” in the wake of Kebe’s videos, and said that “only an evil person could do that sh–.”
In addition to defamation, the jury held Tasha K liable for invasion of privacy through portrayal in a false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Cardi B has been lighting up the airwaves and the charts since “Bodak Yellow” exploded in 2017. She’s now the record holder for the most Hot 100 No. 1s among female rappers, with five, and she’s the first female rapper with two Hot 100 No. 1s — including “Bodak Yellow” — with no accompanying artists.
In that time, she has won a Grammy Award, collected six American Music Awards, eight Billboard Music Awards, and been named on several occasions in the Guinness World Records.
