Cardi B charged with assault over strip club brawl

Rapper Cardi B leaving a police station in Queens, New York on Monday. She turned herself in after a brawl in a strip club.
Rapper Cardi B leaving a police station in Queens, New York on Monday. She turned herself in after a brawl in a strip club. PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW YORK • American rapper Cardi B surrendered to police in New York on Monday, charged with assault and reckless endangerment over an ugly brawl in a strip club that injured a female employee.

The 25-year-old star was in Angels Strip Club in Queens on Aug 29 when someone in her group lobbed furniture inside the night club, causing an employee to suffer "some bruising to her legs", the police said.

The fast-rising rapper turned herself in at a Queens police station and was instructed to appear in criminal court on Oct 29, charged with one count of assault and two counts of reckless endangerment, the police said.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ said she allegedly ordered an attack on two bartenders at the club - sisters who accuse her of harbouring a grudge because one of them slept with her husband, the rapper Offset.

Cardi, who was at the club because Offset was performing as part of the hip-hop trio Migos, allegedly told her group to attack the bartenders with bottles, chairs and a hookah smoking device, TMZ said.

On Monday, she was filmed exiting the police station in Queens, dressed in a beige skirt suit and white blouse, escorted by burly bodyguards into a waiting sport utility vehicle, making no comment to a bevvy of cameras.

The singer, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, is one of the most prominent women in hip-hop and has a child with Offset. Earlier this year, she confirmed reports that the pair had secretly married.

Monday's police booking came just weeks after she was involved in a fracas with fellow rapper Nicki Minaj at New York Fashion Week. She threw a shoe at Minaj, one of today's best-selling musical artists.

Minaj, who was reportedly not hurt, declined to press charges.

Cardi B later took to Instagram to imply that the older Minaj had questioned her parenting skills. She gave birth to a daughter, Kulture, in July.

Cardi B has become one of the biggest new stars in American music since the runaway success last year of her song Bodak Yellow, which touches on her former life making ends meet as a stripper.

A Bronx native, she is the first female rapper to have had multiple No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

She performed in New York last Saturday at the Global Citizen Festival, an unofficial closing event following the week-long United Nations General Assembly, in what was her first concert since giving birth.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 03, 2018, with the headline Cardi B charged with assault over strip club brawl. Subscribe