Cardi B Gets Slammed for Super Bowl Pepsi Commercial After Declining to Perform at Halftime

Not Okurrr? Rapper Cardi B made her Super Bowl commercial debut in a new Pepsi ad starring The Office star Steve Carell and hip-hop star Lil Jon. But some viewers weren’t really on board with the 26-year-old’s participation in aSuper Bowl commercial after she declined to perform during the halftime show with Maroon 5.

“So Cardi B won’t do a halftime performance (which the performer pays for I believe) for protest reasons but will no doubt be paid for a Pepsi #SuperBowl ad? Ok,” one Twitter user wrote. Another commented, “So Cardi B says she passed up tons of $ [for] not performing at the [Super Bowl]. Protest for Colin. Doesn’t mind the Pepsi [commerical] green #SuperBowl.”

Many fans were hoping that Cardi would make a surprise guest appearance during Maroon 5’s halftime performance, especially since Cardi raps on the band’s hit song “Girls Like You.” But hours before the Super Bowl kicked off, Cardi revealed in an interview with the Associated Press that even though she had “mixed feelings” about declining to perform, she still wanted to take a stand.

“My husband, he loves football. His kids play football. It’s really hard for him … He really wants to go to the Super Bowl, but he can’t go to the Super Bowl, because he’s got to stand for something,” Cardi said. “You have to sacrifice that. I got to sacrifice a lot of money to perform. But there’s a man who sacrificed his job for us, so we got to stand behind him.”

But even though Cardi is sitting the halftime performance out, fans can still expect to see her share the stage with the “Sugar” rockers. “I know me and Maroon 5, we gonna have a lot of performances coming [up], especially because that song just means so much to me,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “When I was pregnant and me having a girl inside of me and hearing the song, I teared up a couple of times. Adam [Levine] probably don’t even know that, but it’s real.”