Cardi B Calls On Rvssian For Vybz Kartel Collab
Rapper Cardi B has expressed her desire to collaborate with Dancehall star Vybz Kartel, calling on Jamaican producer Rvssian to facilitate the project.
“Rvssian, I heard Vybz Kartel want to do a song with me. You need to cook up the best motherf—king song for us. You need to cook it up,” she said in a recent Instagram Live.
Rvssian promptly responded in a comment, saying, “I got uuuuu.”
In another live session, Cardi B had elaborated on her admiration for Kartel: “I want to make the most perfect, beautiful, amazing song with Vybz Kartel. He’s really my favorite artist, like he’s literally my number one artist. My favorite artist in the whole wide world.”
Interestingly, in a 2022 interview with Angela Yee on her Lip Service podcast, Cardi B had expressed some hesitation about venturing into Dancehall.
When Yee suggested a Dancehall collaboration might be in her future, Cardi responded apprehensively: “I’m really nervous to do something like that. Because it’s just like… it would be natural, but it’s just like it’s certain things that you just not gonna do because it’s like you not like that great or that at it. Not great at it, but it’s just a little bit out of my lane.”
Despite her reservations, Cardi B has dabbled in Caribbean-influenced music before.
She collaborated with Konshens and Hoodcelebrityy on the 2017 track Back It Up , which appeared on her Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 2 mixtape. Later that year, she linked with Hoodcelebrityy again on Island Girls . In 2022, her Hot Sh*t collab with Kanye West and Lil Durk credited the original Don Dadda, Bunny Wailer, for its sample of Marcia Griffiths’ Electric Boogie.
The rapper further told Yee that if she does decide to have another go at it, the track would have to be authentic. “It’s just like, when you are out of your lane, it’s just like ughhh, and I want it to be like real—like raw. I don’t want it to be like a forced or mainstream-ish,” she said.
Rvssian, who leads Head Concussion Records and Rich Immigrants (a partnership with music giant Interscope Records), has previously worked with Kartel on several songs, including Straight Jeans and Fitted (2010), Get Gal (2011), New Jordans (2014) and Sixteen (2023). Among his many international projects is Writing On The Wall, a French Montana song featuring Cardi B and Post Malone.
This isn’t the first time Cardi B has shown support for Kartel.
In August, the rapper stepped up to defend the Fever deejay after catching wind of some insensitive jokes about his appearance following his release from prison.
“I do not play about f**king Vybz Kartel,” the Bronx rapper said in an X Space. “When I see y’all f**king Americans… No offense, no offense. I mean, I’m American, but when I see y’all talking about f**king Vybz Kartel, I be getting upset ’cause, like, not too much. Not too f**king much. Mind your f**king business. I do not play about f**king Vybz Kartel, bi**h. At all. At all. I do not, I do not, I do not.”