Cardi B’s Am I The Drama lyrics: dissecting the most dramatic moments

After a seven year long wait, Cardi B has finally dropped her second album. The songs on Am I The Drama can roughly be split into three categories: songs about her enviable wealth, money, and status, songs about being in a new relationship, and songs that get into the juicy parts of Cardi’s private life. Naturally, for an album titled Am I The Drama?, it’s the latter songs that come through loudest on a first listen, with her taking shots at Nicki Minaj, BIA, Ice Spice, and Offset.

Ahead, find a brief guide to the Am I The Drama? tracks that come through with the most scandalous bars and candid moments.

Sample lyric: “Guess who drop a thousand times and none of it’s working? Guess who doing shows for damn near free and pockets hurting? Guess who make sure that she play nice when we in person? And guess who done bodied up more bitches than they surgeon?”

Drama – Nicki Minaj beef

Cardi sets out her stall immediately on the album’s opening track, which begins with a TV news style report imagining her arrest for “a crime spree that has left a trail of devastation and fear.” The reporter states that Cardi stands accused of hurting “Bloggers, journalists, and most chillingly, several female rappers” in what promises to be “one of the darkest chapters in music history.”

This WWE-style posturing is all high drama from Cardi, who spends most of “Dead” seemingly addressing Nicki Minaj directly. The pair have been engaged in a long-running beef that escalated into a physical altercation at a 2018 New York Fashion Week party. It seems that Cardi’s lines about an artist whose career is flailing and who saves her insults for social media are aimed at Nicki, specifically the line, “Guess who doing shows for damn near free and pockets hurting?” That’s the same as a claim made by Cardi B’s friend KenBarbie last year in response to Minaj’s song “Bigfoot.”

“Name five BIA songs, gun pointin’ to your head. Bow, I’m dead.”

Drama – BIA diss track

Cardi B stayed quiet in 2024 when BIA dropped her diss track “SUE MEEE?,” in which she called Cardi a bad dresser and brujeria practitioner after the rapper threatened to sue BIA in an Instagram Live. But Cardi responds here in blistering fashion. Cardi’s diss trades chiefly on playground insults (“I’d rather die on the surgery table before I gotta walk around here lookin’ like you”) but also gets darker, spotlighting BIA’s connection to Diddy and his son Justin, with whom she has been romantically linked: “Why you always at Diddy house? (Huh?) /I heard they combed that little kitty out (Ha).”

“Snow-face bitch, whose spot is you takin’? My spot’s forever, ho, I’m like a Dalmatian”

Drama: Ice Spice coming for her spot

Ice Spice’s 2024 song “BB Belt,” widely perceived to be a diss track aimed at Cardi, featured the line “Fallin’ behind like, bitch, pick up your pace. It was funny ’til I took her place.” Cardi seemingly responds on “Magnet,” reminding the world that she hasn’t released an album since 2018 yet remains arguably the biggest female rapper in the world. On this form it’s hard to argue with her assertion.

“My nigga cheat, but I don’t stick no dildos in his ass, bitch (Haha)”

Drama: Hitting back at JT

But perhaps the most scathing disses on “Magnet” are directed toward, fans speculate, former City Girls rapper JT, with whom Cardi engaged in a very public beef with on Twitter in 2022. At the time, the two traded disses like “Lapdog” (Cardi to JT), and not writing their own songs (JT to Cardi). On “Magnet,” Cardi continues the feud and the canine metaphor (“tail-wagging ass b*tch). The line above, specifically, appears to take a shot at JT’s relationship with Lil Uzi Vert.

“I took you back, shit, I was dumb”

Drama: Cardi’s split from Offset

Cardi and Offset filed for divorce in 2024 and many might’ve expected her to use Am I The Drama? as a chance to air out their dirty laundry. Though that does come up on some songs, Cardi mostly sounds hurt about the end of a relationship she truly thought was for life.

“I held back for you, was really biting my tongue. Should’ve fell back from you, instead, I gave you a son,” she raps at one point. “I don’t regret it, it’s a blessin’, just know I learned my lesson So stop with all that calling me and textin’.” Honestly, it’s pretty sad.

Drama – Offset cheating allegations

The couple split up for a reason, however, and Am I The Drama makes it pretty clear that it was his infidelity. “Seems like every day, new lie” she raps on “What’s Goin On,” a song that features Lizzo delivering an interpolation of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” on the hook.

“Shower Tears” is even more direct, with Cardi accusing Offset of seeing other women behind her back. “Here we go again, these some bitches you don’t know again,” she says with an air of exhaustion. “Must be a magician, putting pictures in your phone again. How you textin’ bitches from my bed?”