Fake Agency
By Imani Caldwell
Cardi “I don’t Clean” B
Bronx, NY - Years ago, Offset posted a video of Cardi B in a robe, bedroom slippers, and pushing a broomstick across the floor, cleaning up a room. In the video, he whispered her lyric, "I don't cook, I don't clean. But let me tell you how I got this ring," laughing at her and the female audience that she shared her lifestyle with. In the video, she was clearly cleaning, clearly home with small children, and this was clearly after letting the world know that she was doing all of this for a man who had cheated on her before—a man who has not been nearly as successful as she has been in her career and who cheated on her with women nowhere near her in status. Yet, despite all of this, she found herself pregnant by him multiple times—a man with other children and side-baby mama drama—while still telling her audience that she is strongly independent and has men wrapped around her finger. Tomfoolery.
This is why radical feminist thought has not taken off with younger successful women. They look up to so-called "boss chicks," and those very women are being bossed around by men whose literacy is questionable at best. Take Yung Miami, for example, the other half of City Girls. Their first album spoke of nothing but independence and how women should not get caught up doing anything for a man. Yet, in every video featuring her and other female rappers, they were naked, twerking, rapping about their sexual performance, and selling the idea that their value lies in how much they can please men. This is marketable independence—because none of what they are doing is independent of men. In reality, they are telling men that they will do everything they want while lying to the impressionable young girls who idolize them because of their wealth.
Cardi B starting her career as a stripper and then claiming that she doesn’t have to dance anymore created a climate where young women wanted to follow her path to fame. Strip clubs became launching pads for rap careers, and girls flocked to them with the hopes of dropping a mixtape and winning a Grammy. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down that avenue, and when Beyoncé mentioned OnlyFans in a song with Megan Thee Stallion, women flooded the platform, hoping it would be their key to independence. But the reality remained: this was not independence—it was just another way to appeal to male consumers.
Female rappers have built entire careers on preaching independence, self-sufficiency, and a no-nonsense attitude toward men. They sell the image of women who don’t cook, don’t clean, and don’t need a man for anything but temporary pleasure. But behind the scenes, the reality is a contradiction that both women and men recognize. This contradiction is why the nuclear family still has a chokehold on women. No matter how much they push the idea of female empowerment, their personal lives tell a different story—one where they still seek validation, relationships, and even children with men who are far beneath their status.
Meanwhile, Coi Leray, one of the newer faces of "independent" female rap, just announced that she is pregnant, only to follow up by letting the world know that the father of her child has already cheated on her and the relationship is over before the baby even arrives. These are the same women who claim they have men wrapped around their fingers, but time and time again, they are left humbled, heartbroken, and—more often than not—impregnated by men who do not match their level of success.
Lil’ Kim, one of the pioneers of hypersexual female rap, spent years advocating for female dominance, yet she was in an abusive relationship with the late rapper Biggie Smalls, a man who never publicly claimed her and treated her as an afterthought while he was married to Faith Evans. Foxy Brown, another powerful voice in female rap, also fell into the same cycle—preaching confidence and independence in her music while dealing with toxic relationships behind the scenes. Even Nicki Minaj, arguably the most successful female rapper in history, ended up married to Kenneth Petty, a man with a criminal record who has repeatedly proven to be a liability to her image and career.
The issue is not that these women are choosing to have relationships or children, but rather that they package and sell a fantasy of female independence while ultimately reinforcing the same relationship patterns they claim to reject. Women see these contradictions, and that is why many remain trapped in the traditional nuclear family structure—because the alternative is being sold as a lie. If even the most powerful and financially independent female rappers cannot break free from this cycle, what does that say about the rest of society? The fairytales sold to women by Disney—where love and validation from a man are the ultimate goals—are still deeply ingrained, even in the minds of the most outwardly rebellious women in the industry.
And men see it too. They watch as these women boast about their dominance, only to watch them later bow to the same men they swore they didn’t need. They see the women who claim they are "running the game" quickly settle for men who are beneath them, tolerate infidelity, and become just another statistic in the long history of women being played. This only reinforces the belief that no matter how much women say they don’t need men, deep down, they still crave male validation, attention, and relationships—no matter how toxic.
The contradiction of female rappers and their marketable independence is not just hypocrisy; it’s a reflection of a larger societal issue. The fantasy of true female autonomy is constantly undermined by the reality of conditioning. Women are still programmed to believe that no matter how much money or success they achieve, they are incomplete without a man, even if that man is disloyal or abusive. Until women truly redefine what independence means—beyond just financial success but also in emotional and relationship choices—this cycle will continue, both in rap music and in real life.
