Cardi B and Nicki Minaj have taken their longstanding rivalry to new heights, as Minaj recently accused Cardi of artificially inflating the sales figures of her newly released album.
The latest chapter in this musical soap opera unfolded on Monday, September 29. In a fit of digital snark, Minaj, age 42, posted a series of now-deleted tweets critiquing Cardi’s latest offering, Am I the Drama?. One particularly cutting remark read, “$4.99,” presumably a jab at the album’s promotional price on iTunes, which Minaj used to belittle Cardi’s sales strategies.
Minaj didn’t stop there; she also made pointed references to Cardi’s pregnancy, skewering the lyrics of the track “Magnet” by tweeting, “Abcdefgeeeee / Fallin off the charts wit a big bellyyyy / RUNNING TRAINS / Barefoot, still smellyyyyy / Still. You. Could. Not. outsell. meeeeee.” Ah, nothing like a little lyrical warfare to spice up a mundane Monday!
As expected, Cardi, age 32, didn’t take these insults sitting down. In a tirade of her own X posts (formerly Twitter), she snapped back, “Nothing more annoying than a bored btch. The power I have… make these btches come out of rehab every time. Go to your f***ing room.” Clearly, Cardi is tired of playing nice, and she made that abundantly clear.
The Grammy-winner went on to humorously rename Minaj “Cocaine Barbie,” a reference that seems to echo industry buzz while also threading in a personal dig. Cardi then pivoted to a much darker note, mentioning Minaj’s brother, Jelani Maraj, who was convicted of sexual assault. “A B C D E F G / Your man have to snatch P**** / P**** taste like honeycomb / Your bro be touching 12 year olds,” Cardi remarked, sharing a doctored image of Maraj wearing a hot pink wig.
Cardi continued her diatribe, recounting her day as she attempted to make ribs and brownies, humorously speculating that Minaj must have been streaming her music obsessively. “Why you keep bringing up my album?? It’s not the gag that you think it is,” she wrote in a subsequent post. “You’ve been in the game for 16 years…compare yourself to artists like Rihanna, [Taylor Swift], Drake…you can’t because you are doing worse than all of them.” This comparison may sting, given Minaj’s established career and Cardi’s meteoric rise in a relatively short span.
Adding to the conversation, Cardi pointed out the absurdity of Minaj’s continued focus on her pregnancy while reflecting on her own personal struggles with fertility. “Alright now this the third tweet about my pregnancy…like you weren’t seeing different fertility doctors because you couldn’t reproduce from all them percs scrambling your eggs…NOT ALLEGEDLY… Lord protect my babies,” she concluded, not holding back at all.
As the feud heated up, other rappers made their voices heard, with Ice Spice seemingly chiming in with a laughing emoji, while JT from the City Girls seemingly sided with Minaj. “Lol that bitch home ugly & mad no celebration!” she tweeted, echoing Minaj’s claim of inflated sales numbers. “I would’ve been break dancing right now if I were #1 but she know she lied!!!!!”
In the world of pop culture, these battles highlight not just personal drama but varying tactics in the game of public perception and market positioning—a landscape where sales figures and social media presence collide with personal narratives. And alas, it seems the cycle of rivalry and comeback will continue, leaving fans and onlookers suspended in anticipation of the next episode.