Cardi B Says Selena Gomez Shouldn’t Retire, Needs ‘One More Era’

Clearly frustrated and disappointed in ongoing criticism of her music, Selena Gomez opened up in a recent Vogue cover story that she’d actually considered retiring … at 28! Well, Cardi B is here and she is not here for that!

The “W.A.P.” rapper jumped in to defend her fellow artist, tweeting that Selena “makes good music” and reminding her that “her fans love her.”

Instead of thinking about retirement, Cardi thinks Selena “needs one more era.” Selena’s current era is in Spanish, with her long-awaited Spanish-language EP “Revelación” dropping Friday.

While she didn’t say how closely she’ll be watching returns and reactions to the EP, Gomez made it pretty clear that how her music has been received weighs heavily on her.

“It’s hard to keep doing music when people don’t necessarily take you seriously,” she said. “I’ve had moments where I’ve been like, ‘What’s the point? Why do I keep doing this?’”

Gomez said that she was very proud of her emotionally powerful “Lose You to Love Me,” and yet “for some people it still wasn’t enough.” While many might argue that an artist shouldn’t allow fan reactions to impact their art, it’s nearly impossible to do that work in a vacuum.

In today’s world, it’s nearly impossible to do anything without the pervasive noise of social media slamming against your eardrums — and that’s especially true if you’re a woman, and a woman of color on top of that.

But Cardi, who knows a thing or three about taking a public and critical beating herself, said, “I would love to give her some ideas.” She even suggested, in a follow-up tweet, that Selena needs to consider “a bad bitch era.”

It may be that for Gomez, the public and media scrutiny weighs so heavily because she believes it invades every aspect of her life, including her personal life. When cozy pics of her and her upcoming “Only Murders in the Building” co-star Aaron Dominguez went viral, leading to him being harassed online, Gomez told the Los Angeles Times, “No wonder guys don’t want to date me.”

Gomez has not been romantically entangled (at least as far as anyone knows publicly) for years now. “I think people only care because I’m young,” said Gomez of the scrutiny of her personal life. “The older I get the less they’ll care.”

“For now it’s a part of the job that I don’t really like,” she continued. “I’m actually grateful that I’m not involved with anyone right now.”

The good news for Gomez is that as reviews started coming in for “Revelación” on Thursday, they were almost uniformly positive. EW said the pop star “takes a risk that pays off” on their way to giving it a grade of A-, calling her “a far more versatile musician than she’s been given credit for,” while NME said “love and self-confidence abound,” giving her 4 out of 5 stars.

In even better news for Cardi and a legion of Selenators, Gomez also told Vogue, “I think the next time I do an album it’ll be different. I want to give it one last try before I maybe retire music.”

Considering what a wild pivot “Revelación” was from her 2020 album “Rare,” fans are ready for whatever Selena might have to offer. And, it sounds like she might be open to whatever interesting new ideas Cardi has.

In a subsequent tweet, Cardi said she’s defending Selena because “she is such a sweetheart in person,” saying that while celebrities are always picked apart, Selena “is just too sweet to go through that.”

She concluded by telling Selena, “If she wants to leave, leave ’cause you want to, not cause of these f——.” Now that’s solid advice.