Cardi B has been accused of tricking men into thinking they’d sleep with her, and then robbing them. Indeed, she’s admitted it.

A video of Cardi B from 2016 went viral last week, where Cardi B defended herself from detractors who claimed that she didn’t earn her money. “I had to go strip, I had to go, ‘Oh yeah, you want to (sleep with) me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go back to this hotel,’ and I drugged (men) up, and I robbed them. That’s what I used to do,” she said.

https://twitter.com/BenjaminEnfield/status/1110005271475249152

The argument she makes in the video is bad—she claims that she deserves respect for the money she’s earned, and then describes how she robbed men to make ends meet. This is not “earning money” in the praiseworthy sense she implies. The trouble is, Cardi B styles herself as a gangster rapper, and many successful rappers have claimed to commit horrible acts, both onstage and off. It’s hard to justify excluding her from projects on the basis of her thievery, since so many people who brag about their thievery have been made into stars.

This isn’t a classic free speech issue—Cardi B’s career will likely depend on whether thousands of people choose to support her and her music, not because some industry insider acting alone decides to cut her down. Not wanting to encourage bad behaviour, these erstwhile fans will do it for the best of reasons—and in so doing, they will make it harder for artists to tell stories of violence and poverty. Sure, Cardi B’s confession was not in a song, but if you want to hear great stories about struggle and hard choices, you probably need to hear from people who say they did bad things.

Perhaps artistic creation is no justification for hurting others, though refusing to work with someone definitely has a cost in terms of what you can create. Having Cardi B making great music is probably not worth it if she’s hurting people behind the scenes, a point that members of the #MeToo movement have articulated well.

Though she has been getting compared to R Kelly and Harvey Weinstein, two men who got away with sexual assault to some extent for years, we don’t have any reason yet to think Cardi B made a similar habit of robbing drugged men. Cardi B’s defence of her actions informed readers that the men she dated were “conscious, willing and aware”, suggesting that she robbed the men without sex or after sex but didn’t sexually assault them.That will help save her career from damage: though still a serious violation, Cardi B doesn’t say she sexually assaulted anyone in the 2016 video—just drugging and thievery afterwards. Interestingly, past actions like these won’t currently end a rapper’s career.

In any case, there is no evidence that she is a long-running sexual predator like Cosby and R. Kelly. This means two things: first, it’s worth considering if she’s able to change; if so, then she is not a danger to anyone. After responding with typically passionate defences on social media for a few days, Cardi B tweeted out a promise to improve. The tweet acknowledged the tendency of some rappers to glorify crime. Promises of change don’t guarantee change, but they’re an important step.

Second, the main reason she gave for her actions, poverty, no longer applies. While not every rapper has committed the crimes they talk or brag about, Cardi B was nearly in tears describing her actions, not a normal reaction to an empty boast. She didn’t seem proud of her behaviour, and is now in a position where she doesn’t need to steal for money.

Cardi B is the first female rapper to top the Billboard charts since Lauryn Hill. She has over 20 Hot 100 hits and one of the best reviewed albums of 2018. It would be a shame if we started judging gangster rap when it just had one of its biggest female stars. The sexual dimension to this story, the way that her hustle targeted men, plays to the troubling idea that “letting” a female become so successful was a mistake. But men have had more freedom to hustle for a lot longer than women; Cardi B may be judged extra harshly because people aren’t as used to seeing a woman wield power for selfish reasons. (Certainly the weaponized sexuality angle seems new.) But perhaps that sort of behaviour will be important if women are to compete with men, since some of the most powerful men in the world (and increasingly, some women too) use power for personal gain themselves.

By Aaron Nava