Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Cardi B Says Race Shaped the Karmelo Anthony Verdict and 35-Year Sentence
Cardi B says race influenced Karmelo Anthony's murder conviction and 35-year sentence, arguing the outcome would differ if Anthony were White.
Cardi B didn’t couch her reaction to the Karmelo Anthony verdict in legal jargon. Speaking on X Spaces after a jury convicted Anthony of murder on June 9, the rapper put race at the center of what she sees as an unjust outcome: a 35-year sentence for the teen who stabbed Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in 2025.
Photo: Presley Ann/Getty Images; courtroom footage via NBC News/YouTube.
“It is a race thing, I’m pretty sure,” Cardi said. “Especially in Texas. This happens a lot in Texas. If Anthony was White and he was surrounded by a bunch of Black football players, the case would have went extremly different.”
Cardi went further, calling the length of the sentence excessive and saying Anthony should have faced at most manslaughter. “I sure learned something from this,” she said, then addressed her own parenting with a blunt piece of advice: “I learned to tell my sons do not argue with no White boys. ‘Cause, baby, ain’t no law protecting us if something goes down with them. That’s what I learned from this case.”
The facts the jury heard were straightforward in their cruelty: prosecutors say an argument escalated at a rain-delayed meet when Anthony stood under Metcalf’s team’s tent, and that Anthony stabbed Metcalf once in the chest. Anthony’s defense argued he acted in self-defense, but the jury deliberated roughly three hours before returning a murder conviction.
Elsewhere in the public response, Cardi’s comments have joined a broader, tense conversation about race, youth, and the criminal justice system’s handling of high-profile schoolyard violence. Her intervention — raw, impatient, and framed through personal stakes as a Black mother — is less a legal brief than a cultural judgment about what the verdict represents.
Hear Cardi offer her thoughts on the Karmelo Anthony case below.
Listen to Cardi B Weigh In on the Karmelo Anthony Trial Verdict
See also: 47 of the Longest Prison Bids in Hip-Hop History, including C-Murder, Max B, B.G. and more.
