Nicki Minaj has fans talking after her recent comments on women in hip-hop.
During a recent Instagram Live session with Jesy Nelson to promote their new single “Boyz”—the same one that has sparked “Blackfishing” concerns regarding Nelson and caused Minaj to comment on Nelson’s former group Little Mix—Nicki talked about “new females” who “don’t want to be critiqued ever.”
“It’s like everyone is just supposed to praise you 24/7,” Nicki says at the 48:40-mark of the clip above. “Why would you even want that? Let me tell you what happens when that happens. What happens is when you put out an album, the sales won’t translate because people have been lying to you, and they haven’t told you they don’t like a song… Then when you put an album out and you thinking everybody love you. I’ve seen it recently happen. You know they put an album out, and it doesn’t sell what they want it to sell.”
Nicki explained that sometimes albums don’t sell “because a lot of people are lying to you for whatever reason” and that rappers “should want people to be honest with you.”
Among the reactions to Nicki’s comments are people pointing to her response to criticism in the past, and to when her last studio album, Queen, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 back in 2018, specifically how she responded to that news. While her album moved 185,000 units in its first week, it wasn’t enough to top Travis Scott’s ASTROWORLD. Nicki pointed to merch bundles as the reason her album couldn’t top the charts.
“I spoke to him,” Minaj said about Scott in 2018. “He knows he doesn’t have the #1 album this week.”
Below, a collection of what the Barbz and others are saying about Nicki’s latest comments.
