Hereโs another case of a female rapper having to explain why sheโs the illest MC among a male-dominated genre. This time itโs Grammy-nominated rapper Nicki Minaj, who decided to weigh in today when Bossip posed this question:
#seriousquestion Why aren't there more mainstream female rappers?
Minaj saw Bossip retweeted a few flagrant tweets about female MCs (it was probably this one that rubbed her the wrong way) and defended herself. In her own words, Minaj says she has rapped alongside greats like Jay Z,Lil Wayne, Eminem and Kanye West, which is pretty much all the proof you need. In case you forgot, sheโs the one who washed everyone on โMonster" a few years ago.
Plus, Minaj has been a popular face in pop culture this year, recently covering this month's issue of Billboard and promising to release another mixtape in her career soon. "Well, I want to touch a couple of beats that I wasnโt on. I could have bodied a lot of the records that came out in the last year. But the main thing is, I have to set an example for female rappers," she says.
Read her tweets, below.
I've gone toe to toe w/everyone of your favorite male MC's. To undermine my skill & diversity as an MC is actually comical @ this point. ๐ธ๐ฝ๐
I saw Bossip retweeting ignorance so I figured I'd put that out there. Lol. The greats give me my respect. The great journalists as well.
If a male rapper was on tracks w/Wayne, Jay, Eminem, Kanye, etc going ROUND 4 ROUND he'd b hailed as a GREAT as well. Jealousy is a disease
Not giving me my props doesn't stop me from being great. I am a mogul. Your hate is what made this possible. Lol. Thank uuuuuu! Mmuuaahhh!!!
Lol. R the male rappers only successful cuz they have a big bulge ? ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ธ๐ฝ https://t.co/lF5ngNpe3A
Your greatest achievement in life will be attempting to undermine my greatest achievements in life. lol. Now check that. Phaedra voice ๐ค
Bossip responded to a few of Nicki's tweets, and stressed that the issue specifically wasn't about her. Instead, they were interested in continuing the conversation on Twitter.
We undermined your skill? We must have missed that part... @NICKIMINAJ https://t.co/fq3dpLhmmd
Why would you assume that RTs mean we agree? https://t.co/tov4x6LTqX
Somehow our extremely general question about women rappers has turned into a very specific @NICKIMINAJ conversation. Gotta love this app...
You know a lot of people aren't really that smart #OnHere. They really just wanna be entertained. We got 'em tho. https://t.co/iNlHED1kvy
Wow, our lil' question had Nicki hotter than a Middle Eastern climate, violent...