Two and a half years after Kanye West promised fans "Ima fix wolves" following the release of The Life of Pablo, it's becoming common practice for artists to keep tinkering with their albums even when they've already hit streaming services.
The latest to take this approach is Nicki Minaj with her new album, Queen. After its Aug. 10 release, Minaj told fans that she planned to add a feature from Future and give an update to the album-opener "Ganja Burns."
"Just listened to #GangaBurns after a long day & realized that I hate how low I made the hook," she tweeted. "Gotta get it swapped out. That’s like my fave song & I can’t let it go out like that. Plus I was so sleep deprived I wrote burns instead of burn when they were stressing me 4 tracklist."
Now, Minaj has added her "FEFE" collaboration with 6ix9ine to Queen. The song—originally a 6ix9ine single featuring Nicki—first showed up in the album's tracklist on TIDAL Tuesday night and has since been added to Spotify and the "bonus version" of Queen on Apple Music.
“We added ‘FEFE,’” Minaj told the CRWN audience during her interview with TIDAL's Elliott Wilson on Tuesday. “Shout-out to my baby Tekashi. I love him. Because of streaming, we can update the albums.”
Adding a song that debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 gives the album a hit and could help with future sales totals. As of Tuesday, the song remains in the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and continues to accumulate millions of streams.
Hits Daily Double initially reported Queen was on pace to move between 135,000 to 150,000 equivalent album units in its first week. That has since increased to 145,000 to 155,000 units. If those numbers are accurate, the album will mark the lowest debut of Minaj's career so far. Pink Friday tallied 375,000 in the first week, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded moved 253,000 units, and The Pinkprint racked up 244,000.
On her Queen standout, "Barbie Dreams," Minaj playfully teased her new collaborator with the line: "Tekashi want a ménage, I said 'Treyway'/Curved him and went the Kim and Kanye way."
