I doubt anyone has ever purchased or streamed Cardi B’s music just to look at the album artwork, but here we are. A man in California is suing the rapper, alleging that she humiliated him and harmed his reputation by using his image on the cover of a mixtape in 2016. Yes, it was six years ago.
Cardi was a rising star back then, still in the early stages of parlaying her role on Love & Hip Hop into her current megastardom. She released a few mixtapes along the way, one of which featured an image of Cardi posing with a man’s head between her legs.
The problem is that the photo was digitally altered to include a portion of a distinctive back tattoo belonging to Kevin Michael Brophy, who now claims he’s traumatised because people who’ve never met him and don’t know who he is saw the tattoo on a dude who was simulating having a Cardi B sandwich for lunch six years ago.
“Their life has been disrupted,” Cappello told the jury as Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, watched from the defense table. He said the image disturbed Brophy along with his wife, Lindsay Michelle Brophy, who he says initially questioned her husband if it was him in the cover art. The couple has two young children.
Brody has said he once considered his back tattoo featuring a tiger battling a serpent to be a “Michelangelo piece” that has since become “raunchy and disgusting.”
We question that whole bit about the wife questioning Brophy, not because he’s likely not Cardi B’s type, but simply because of this: he’s white and the model wearing his tattoo is Black.
Brophy is asking for $5 million in the case.
