Cardi B Awarded Millions in Defamation Suit Win Against Blogger Tasha K

VOGUE Taiwan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Jury Awards Rapper $4 Million in General and Punitive Damages 

Three years after declaring in an Instagram Live video that if a certain blogger was going to keep
harassing her and her friends and making s—t up, that she was going to take, “All your f—–g bread!” Cardi B may have not decimated Latasha Kebe financially, but the popular host of the Wino Gang Podcast stands to lose millions.

Tuesday, a day after the jury found Kebe, known online as Tasha K, and a company she owns liable for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress against the rapper, awarding her $1 million in actual damages for pain and suffering and/or reputational injury and $250,000 in medical expenses — jurors added $1.5 million in punitive damages and Cardi B’s attorney fees to that total to push the compensation owed to more than $4 million.

“After almost four years of repeated libel and slander against me, being able to walk away from this victorious brings me great happiness,” a triumphant Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almánzar, said in a statement following the victory Tuesday.

this is three years ago when Cardi B said to Tasha K
"you wanna keep making sh*t up? alright then, imma take all your fkin bread"
she literally doesn't play pic.twitter.com/GWfhZXORKu

— CardiBArchive💎💎💎 (@cardibarchive_) January 25, 2022

"During this trial, all of you have learned about the darkest time in my life," she said. "That moment in time was fueled by the vile, disgusting, and completely false narratives that were repeatedly and relentlessly being shared online. I thought I would never be heard or vindicated, and I felt completely helpless and vulnerable. I have never taken for granted the platform that my fame allows me to have, which is why for over three years I dedicated every resource I had to seek justice.”

The opposing counsel did not agree with Cardi B’s assessment of the facts, nor the conclusion reached by the jury.

“We disagree with the verdict, and we will be filing an appeal,” Kebe’s lawyer Sadeer Sabbak said in a statement Tuesday.

The legal victory has its roots in 2018 when Kebe began making “degrading and harassing statements” about her, the lawsuit says. On Sept. 19, 2018 Kebe published a video of an interview she did with a woman who said she’d known Cardi B before her music career. The video includes the “false, malicious and defamatory” statements that Cardi B was a prostitute, has herpes and had suffered outbreaks on her mouth, and used cocaine.

“None of the aforementioned statements about Plaintiff are true,” the lawsuit says. “Plaintiff was never a prostitute or a user of cocaine. Plaintiff has never, and does not now, have herpes, nor has she had herpes outbreaks on her mouth.”