Nicki Minaj's new album Queen moved 185,000 equivalent album units in its opening week, but that wasn't enough to dethrone Travis Scott's ASTROWORLD for the No. 1 spot on this week's Billboard 200 chart.
Unhappy with the results, Minaj tweeted on Sunday afternoon that she believes Scott only earned the No. 1 position because he boosted his sales by including ASTROWORLD in tour and merch bundles. "I spoke to him," Minaj wrote. "He knows he doesn’t have the #1 album this week."
Minaj hinted that she thinks Billboard will change their rules to prevent artists from boosting their sales by using tactics like this in the future. She also revealed that she has spoken with Scott about all of this. "Travis sold 200K in his first week of clothes alone," Minaj said. "I spoke to him last night and he said he's selling clothes b4 the music."
Referencing Kylie Jenner's Instagram post last week that promoted Scott's upcoming tour, Minaj wrote, "I put my blood sweat & tears in writing a dope album only for Travis Scott to have Kylie Jenner post a tour pass telling ppl to come see her & Stormi."
Minaj pointed out that she lost 12 hours of sales by not dropping Queen right at midnight on Thursday night and hinted that she won't be holding her tongue about any of this on the next episode of her Queen Radio show on Apple Music.
Moving on from Travis Scott, Minaj said that she thinks Spotify tried to teach her a lesson for debuting Queen on Apple Music shortly before it arrived on other streaming services. She brought up the heavy promotion that Spotify gave to Drake despite his business relationships with Apple Music: "Spotify put Drake’s face on every playlist but told me they’d have to teach me a lesson for playing my music 10 mins early on #QueenRadio."
In a follow-up tweet, Minaj speculated that she wasn't defended by her label because they feared that a similar tactic would be used by Spotify on their next album rollout for Ariana Grande's Sweetener.
Nearly an hour after beginning the spree of tweets, Minaj added, "Do you know how many women get systematically blackballed out of their positions in an office building & can’t fight back?????"
After her tweets stirred up some controversy, Minaj returned to Twitter Sunday evening and said her messages were all "sarcasm/dry humor."
Minaj finished by telling fans she just wrote a new freestyle that we might be hearing soon.
Complex has reached out to representatives at Spotify for comment.
