Mona apologizes to Cardi B after Joe Budden called her live on The Joe Budden Podcast, where the comedian said she never meant to hurt Cardi and did not know the clip she reacted to was an edited piece of a 2024 live.
The hosts said they did not want to talk about Mona while she was not in the room, so Joe dialed her number on air. Her first words once the temperature check started were an apology. Mona said she DMed Cardi the moment Cardi first spoke up, and that she never expected Cardi to be hurt or upset.
The apology follows a long statement from Cardi, who responded after Mona argued that colorism is the reason Cardi gets brand deals that dark skinned women do not. Mona, who called herself a fan, had posted her take on TikTok. Cardi wrote that the comments came from a 15 minute live in 2024 that was cut down to 13 seconds. She said she has never denied that colorism is real, that she saw it herself while working in a strip club, and that she can never dismiss how it affects dark skinned women and men, from the workplace to the justice system.
What she will not accept, Cardi wrote, is the idea that her skin tone is the only reason she made it. She described a come up where people saw her teeth, the acne on her forehead and her dusty braids before anything else, and called her a dirty stripper. Everybody told her no, she said. She admitted it can be easier for a light skinned woman to get a foot in the door, but wrote that what keeps you in the room is the work, the strategy, the consistency and the talent.
Cardi also made it personal. She wrote that Mona had been in her DMs for years asking for personal advice, surgery advice and career advice, including how to pitch herself and how to get brand deals. If her success was only about her skin, she asked, why was Mona asking her how it was done? She accused Mona of using a sensitive topic as a shield while Mona was taking heat for comments about Tia Kemp, and said she was the one getting dragged for it.
On the call, Mona said that hearing Cardi say she caused another round of backlash made her feel horrible. She has been open about being dragged online all year, she said, and she would not wish that on anyone, let alone at the level Cardi has likely dealt with. She still found a joke, saying a comment about her belly button pinched a little, then moved right back to the point. Even the people she considers enemies are not people she wants to see dragged, she said.
Joe told Mona he thought it was big of her to apologize. He reminded her that a platform her size carries a powerful voice and that passion can pull people into speaking before they have the full picture. The colorism conversation is a bigger one that deserves to happen, he said, but not with Cardi as the poster child.
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Mona took the research on herself. She said she did not know the clip was edited or that old, and that her response would have been completely different if she had. She put it on a TikTok page where she does not get much attention, expecting a small conversation, and never expected it to blow up the way it did. When Mona apologizes for it now, she frames it as a lesson: she could sit in it and wallow, or she could figure out how to avoid it, and her answer is to tighten up on research. She knows people will say the answer is obvious, but she said most people do not do it, and that this was avoidable.
Mona said she and Cardi have already talked privately and did not share what was said.
