While most celebrities do not have a background in economics, their reach and recognition mean that people will listen to their takes on almost any subject.
That is what happened when famous rapper Cardi B went on an expletive-laden rant this week about food prices and inflation.
"Everything Lettuce was like $2 a couple of months ago, and now it's like f**ing $7," Cardi B says in a minute-long video posted on her Twitter account on January 4. "Of course I'm going to say something: The f**k?!”
The video quickly picked up steam and received over 84,000 likes in less than 24 hours. The Bronx-born artist behind viral songs like "I Like It" and "Girls Like You", 30-year-old Cardi B has over 27.5 million followers on Twitter and 148 million on Instagram (META).
Cardi B Is Really, Really Mad About Food Inflation
Cardi B starts out the video by shooting down critiques that she shouldn't care about inflation because she's rich and says that it is noticeable to her when she goes to the grocery store so she "can't even imagine what middle-class people [...] are mother-f***ing thinking."
She goes on to call on "anyone that's responsible of these f***ing prices to put that sh*t the f**k down" and do something to lower them.
"You're going to go broke soon because you're not budgeting," Cardi B says in another call-out to critics who say that those with her wealth (an estimated $40 million) do not need to worry about increases in prices that won't make a big difference to her.
Rising grocery prices have certainly not gone unnoticed across different income levels -- last spring, one study found that 73% of U.S. households cut back on restaurants and takeout due to rising costs while 57% have bought fewer groceries.
This Is What's Really Going On With Grocery Prices
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the cost of food rose by 10.6% between November 2021 and 2022. At a 12% increase, food bought for eating at home rose even faster than eating out while a conflation of different factors meant that certain staples like eggs were up nearly 50% at one point in 2022.
Last August, a gallon of milk at Walmart (WMT) cost $3.46 -- a 150.72% increase from the $1.38 seen a year ago.
The extreme examples are often a result of availability at a given moment in time -- because of a shortage in Mexico, avocados are another item that saw double-digit inflation last summer before coming down again. Many analysts also predict that the biggest increases are already behind us.
But Cardi B's speech on 'groceries tripling up' has clearly hit a nerve -- while the rapper's astronomical popularity and unfiltered way of speaking help her go viral, the experience of going to the grocery store and being shocked by what one has to pay is one that many people can relate to.
Cardi B is also known to post hot takes on current topics. When the covid-19 outbreak first started spreading across the U.S. in the spring of 2020, the rapper posted an Instagram video in which she said that "S*** is getting real!" A popular DJ remixed it and the clip soared to the top of iTunes downloads and became somewhat of an early pandemic anthem.
