Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar And SZA Win Big At 2026 American Music Awards

Cardi B swept the hip hop categories at the 52nd American Music Awards. Kendrick Lamar took best male hip hop artist. SZA took best female R&B for the second straight year. Bruno Mars came in and ran R&B clean. Cardi B won best female hip hop artist, best hip hop song for ErrTime, and best hip hop album for Am I The Drama. Three for three. The album dropped in 2025 after seven years of fans waiting, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and has not slowed down. Cardi has now won best hip hop song three times at the AMAs, the most of any artist in the category. She is officially the most decorated rapper in AMA hip hop song history. And she did it as a Black woman from the Bronx who came up on Instagram, got dragged for being from reality TV, got dragged for everything she has ever done, and still kept her foot on the necks of everybody who counted her out. The receipts now sit on a shelf next to her Grammy. The Drama tour starts next year and is already one of the most anticipated runs in hip hop.

Kendrick took best male hip hop artist again, off the strength of GNX and the Grand National Tour with SZA, which the AMAs also nominated for tour of the year. Kendrick has been operating at a different temperature since 2024. Super Bowl headline. Pop Out concert. The Drake battle. Pulitzer level catalog. And he is still doing it on his own label, on his own terms, with his own creative team. He didn’t show up to perform last night and didn’t need to. The win speaks for itself.

SZA won best female R&B artist for the second year in a row. Same award she took home in 2025 for Saturn. Same dominance, different season. SOS Deluxe Lana kept her at the top of the genre, the Grand National Tour with Kendrick was one of the biggest hip hop R&B tours of the era, and the woman who was once dismissed as a backpack alternative R&B singer is now the undisputed leader of the genre. The BTS members presented her with the trophy on stage, which itself is the kind of cross cultural pop moment that says everything about where the genre is right now.

Bruno Mars had the cleanest night of any Black male artist in the building. Best male R&B artist. Best R&B song for I Just Might. Best R&B album for The Romantic. Three wins. Bruno is in the rarest air an entertainer can occupy. The man has a residency. The man has a tequila brand that sold to one of the biggest spirits conglomerates on earth for nine figures. The man has Lady Gaga collaborations winning collaboration of the year. The man is one of the most universally respected live performers working. And he keeps winning R&B awards as a Filipino, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian artist who has spent his entire career showing the kind of reverence for Black music that the Black music community has noticed and returned in full. The Romantic is a love letter to a genre, and the genre voted right back.

Leon Thomas won breakthrough R&B artist. That is a name to remember if you have not been paying attention. Leon came up as a child actor on Nickelodeon, but the music has always been there. He is signed to Ty Dolla Sign’s label and has spent the last few years quietly building a catalog that nods at Prince, at D’Angelo, at the live band soul tradition the genre needed somebody to inherit. Mutt has been one of the most critically loved R&B records of the last 12 months. The breakthrough is now officially official.

Source: Baller Alert