Cardi B says female rappers are under "mad pressure" to continually have smash hits.

The 'WAP' hitmaker says there are double standards in the hip-hop industry whereby male artists can go for years without putting out new material and still be relevant, but the same doesn't go for women artists.

She said: "Female rappers, y'all, they are always in mad pressure.

"If you don't have a super crazy smash, it's like oh, you flop, flop, flop. The song could be like two-times platinum and it's still flop, flop, flop. You're always under pressure, and I feel like it's not fair."

Of her male counterparts, she added: "I feel like there's male artists who go two years without putting a f***** song out and they don't go, 'Oh, you're irrelevant. It's over for you.' Me, I didn't put out songs for nine months and it's like, 'Oh, she's irrelevant. She's over. She's a flop. We told you that.'"

The 27-year-old Grammy-winner insisted she's not "going to put out a song that I'm not really in love with just because."

Cardi admitted "at one time, I felt like I was putting out too much music and I took a little break."

But when she wasn't firing out new music, she faced backlash and rumours started to spread that she had fallen out with her label.

The 'I Like It' hitmaker added to SiriusXM: "Throughout this whole time people were making rumours like, 'Oh she's having problems with her label,' 'Her label is shelving her, Her label is tired of her and they're getting more female talent.'

"It's like, no, they never tired of me. Labels, they want you to put music out. That's what they love. They want you to put music out all the time, all the time."

Cardi recently insisted she has no plans to quit the music business, despite constant criticism.

She said: "I feel like people are attacking me because they want me to feel the pressure of bullying, and they want me to give up, and they want me to say, 'Oh, I quit music' or 'I'll delete my Instagram, delete my Twitter.' And I'm not willing to do that.

"No one will ever have that much power [over] me. Ain't no way that I'm going to quit."