Why Are Cardi B And Rapper Akbar V Beefing On Twitter?

Rap fans logging into Twitter this week have been confronted with trending topics including Cardi B and Akbar V and might be confused to learn that the two rappers have been beefing for the past 24 hours. For one thing, who is Akbar V? Why does she have a problem with Cardi B? And what does Nicki Minaj have to do with all this? Here’s a quick primer to help you get up-to-date.

Who Is Akbar V?

For the uninitiated, Akbar V is, like Cardi B, a rapper with an origin rooted in the Love & Hip-Hop universe. Hailing from Atlanta, this 33-year-old rapper has had a rough childhood but has been using the exposure from the show to slowly build an audience for her music to turn her life around. She currently has a little under 18,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and a little over 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. While none of her songs has yet broken the million-streams mark on any platform, she recently received a big look when Nicki Minaj tapped her to appear on the “Super Freaky Girl” “Queen Mix” alongside JT of City Girls, BIA, Katie Got Bandz, and Maliibu Miitch.

Why Is Akbar V Beefing With Cardi B?

Over the weekend, Cardi received a ton of attention for featuring on buzzing Memphis rapper GloRilla’s new song “Tomorrow 2.” While the song had plenty of fans, it’s also found its detractors — one of whom is Akbar V. The Atlanta rapper tweeted, “If @chartdata ain’t say it we ain’t believing the CAP,” referring to the song’s hype and the popular account that aggregates album song performance listings from DSPs and Billboard‘s charts. It seemed to some — including Cardi — that the tweet was meant to shade the supposed success of “Tomorrow 2,” since the track had been released in close proximity to “Super Freaky Girl.”

After catching wind of the tweet, Cardi made a few comments of her own. “Count all the times chart data posted u,” she wrote. “I don’t really like the internet games… My dms is open and also the streets!” Cardi apparently reached out to Akbar privately to inquire about the tweet, but Akbar clearly didn’t feel like settling the matter behind the scenes. In a string of tweets of her own, she complained that someone “gave this ho Cardi B my number” and shared a screenshot of their text exchange, accusing Cardi of threatening her.

Akbar then went on a long tirade, proclaiming her fealty to Nicki Minaj — with whom Cardi has had a long history of friction — denouncing Cardi’s success. “@NICKIMINAJ is the #QueenOfRap and @iamcardib u are the peasant ho ..” she wrote. When Cardi made a pointed comment about taking care of her kids — a shot at Akbar, who has five children of her own — things escalated into full-blown conflict. When Akbar replied, “U was in the strip clubs i was in the streets ..how is it any difference… you still talking but bringing my kids into it,” Cardi let her have it, contrasting their situations. “I won’t put my kids in the same hoods I was I raised in let alone ABANDONED THEM ..u had that choice to make as well not once but FIVE TIMES,” she wrote.

The back-and-forth continued with a slew of responses from Akbar, to which Cardi replied by sharing a video from Akbar’s leaked sex tape. “Now my kids got to watch this again @iamcardib u dead wrong for uploading that porn stuff about me again u scoop so low but kool,” the Atlanta rapper replied. “U just threw me back into anxiety.” Cardi deleted the tweet, but later retweeted a notice from a fan that Akbar had used a screenshot from the video as a single cover on DSPs. “WAIT A DAMN MINUTE…she lied to me?” Cardi wondered.

The two rappers continued to trade insults into the evening, with Akbar accusing Cardi of having her husband Offset call her to and daring Cardi to take it to the street. Cardi exasperatedly predicted the next steps: “Let’s guess the next step …a diss track that’s going to be mass bought on iTunes and going to chart on twitter… I should of never argue with this deadbeat , I should of just left it at this.”

They might still be going, but at some point, Akbar’s Twitter account was suspended for unknown reasons. Incidentally, it’s not the first time her account was suspended. Meanwhile, Cardi B has gone back to promoting “Tomorrow 2,” while Nicki Minaj, the apparent motivation behind the whole Twitter spat, went back to promoting her own new video for “Likkle Miss (Remix)” featuring Skeng after going off on YouTube for age-restricting it.