Cardi B in New York court over Queens strip club brawl

Rapper Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, leaves at Queens County Criminal Court Dec. 7, 2018 to face charges stemming from a strip club fight in Queens. Image: Timothy A. Clary/AFP

Cardi B appeared Friday in a New York criminal court, where she was served with two protection orders and warned against making threatening remarks on social media following a strip club brawl.

The 26-year-old — dressed in a belted black coat with a fur collar and a wide-brimmed beige hat, with rainbow-colored hair and silver sparkly nail extensions — was in court as she received five Grammy nominations.

Her five-minute appearance in the Queens courtroom came four days after she failed to turn up as requested on Monday, leading prosecutors to demand a $2,500 (around P131,850) bail.

But the judge deemed that unnecessary, saying she was not a flight risk.

The star, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, was ordered to refrain from any contact with two alleged victims, which the judge said included not making any remarks on social media that could be deemed threatening.

She stood wordlessly with her hands clasped behind her back, before exiting with her lawyer through a throng of television cameras and photographers waiting outside and getting into a vehicle.

On Aug. 29, Cardi B was in the Angels Strip Club in Queens when her group reportedly lobbed bottles, chairs and a hookah smoking device, which police said bruised a female employee in the legs.

On Friday, the singer waited more than half an hour in the basement arraignment courtroom, seated in the public gallery while six other defendants appeared before her.

In October, police charged her with one count of assault and two counts of reckless endangerment over the incident.

U.S. media reports say she allegedly ordered an attack on two sisters working at the club because one of them slept with her husband, the rapper Offset. She announced this week that the couple had separated.

They secretly married in Sept. 2017 and share a daughter, Kulture, born in July.

Cardi B has turned into one of the biggest new stars in the U.S. music since the runaway success last year of her song “Bodak Yellow,” which touches on her former life making ends meet as a stripper.

She was also involved in a fracas with fellow rapper Nicki Minaj at New York Fashion Week in September, later taking to Instagram to say that the older Minaj had questioned her parenting skills. MKH

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