Cardi B was ‘fighting for her life’ ahead of her performance at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
The 31-year-old rapper, who recently appeared to split from husband Offset, took to the stage in Miami for the show at the Fontainebleau hotel as planned but told fans she had been struggling with illness, hours before pulling through and putting on a show like the absolute trouper she is.
In a video on her Instagram story before the New Year’s Eve show, she told her 169 million fans: ‘I am fighting for my life right now. I’m literally fighting for my life right now.
‘Like, I am so sick and I don’t understand why because when I was in New York I was going out in sweaters, toes out, everything. I was good.’
Looking low-key with no make-up on and her hair covered up, the WAP star carried on: ‘Soon as I landed in Miami bro… I’ve been telling people I am allergic to Miami.’
She added, no doubt irking all Floridians: ‘I’m allergic to Florida. I’m allergic to this state. Like I’m allergic to this state.
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‘It doesn’t even make no sense. Like, as soon as I landed four hours later, I felt a little cough, my chest started getting tight.
‘Well, I’ve been fighting for three days and I have a huge performance later. Huge performance, like I get that it’s New Year’s but I have this huge performance. And I’m fighting, fighting.’
The musician was joined on the bill for the US celebration of the new year by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, who performed in New York.
Also on the line-up were Ellie Goulding, Janelle Monae, 30 Seconds To Mars and Renee Rapp.
Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve is an annual broadcast in the US, featuring the countdown to midnight and the drop of the crystal ball in Times Square.
The show is best known in the UK for its association with the sitcom Friends, when Monica and Ross Gellar (played by Courteney Cox and David Schwimmer) tried to recreate a school dance routine during a broadcast.
As well as feeling unwell, Cardi, real name Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar Cephus, recently confirmed she and husband Offset had split up.
She began dating the Bad and Boujee hitmaker, 31, in 2017 with the couple announcing their engagement in the same year and secretly tying the knot in September 2017.
Cardi and Offset initially split in 2018 shortly after the birth of their first child, Kulture Kiari Cephus, with Cardi filing for divorce in September 2020.
Despite reuniting only a month later and welcoming their son, Wave Set Cephus, in 2021, in mid-December Cardi seemed to reveal they had split once again.
During an Instagram Live, the Bodak Yellow star had been single for some time and hadn’t been sure how to address the news.
‘I don’t know if you guys have been getting clues from me from my [Instagram] Lives or from my Stories when I put on certain music,’ she told her fans.‘I have been single for a minute now but I have been afraid… not afraid I just don’t know how to tell the world.
‘But I feel like today has been like a sign. The last time I got on live I kind of wanted to tell you guys but I didn’t know how to tell you, so I changed my mind.
‘But it has been like this for a minute now, I just took it as a sign. I want to start 2024 fresh and open. I don’t know I’m curious for a new life, a new beginning and yeah I am excited.’
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