UPDATE 4/13/2018 10:41AM: We reached out to representatives at Capcom about Nicki's take on Chun-Li. They confirmed that they weren't involved with the making of Nicki's single, but they "are happy to see Street Fighter's impact on popular culture and its characters referenced in songs and other forms of entertainment." They declined to comment on Nicki's lines seemingly referring to Chun-Li being a "villain," nor would they comment on if they'd be open to working with Nicki in the future.
Original story below.
Nicki Minaj dropped two singles earlier today, "Chun-Li" and "Barbie Tingz." But there's at least one issue with the former song.
"They need rappers like me," says Minaj in the song. "So they can get on their fucking keyboards and make me the bad guy, Chun-Li." However, as Street Fighter players know, Chun-Li is not the "bad guy" in the video game series (or in the 1994 film.) Instead, she's an Interpol officer looking to avenge her late father.
But if you want to get your nerd hat on, there are some similarities between the two. For the longest time, Minaj was the only major female rap superstar in the hip-hop game while Chun-Li was also the first and only woman fighter when she was introduced in the video game, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and remained to be so until the next game, Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams. Chun-Li is the only flagship woman character for Street Fighter and the company behind the game, Capcom, as Minaj is for Young Money. (If you want to get deeper into the analogy, we'd say Lil Wayne is Ryu and Drake is Ken.)
And technically if she's the opponent of another character, she could be considered the "bad guy." But either way the Street Fighter team is here for Minaj's use of the character.
However, if Minaj ever wants to go down the Street Fighter route again, an "Akuma" track would certainly give way to "demonic" bars. And there's always "M. Bison" if she truly wants to be the villain. In the meantime, tweeters are calling her out for the Chun-Li slip-up.
