Rap beef is inevitable. The viciousness, the pettiness and the diss tracks are all a part of the brutal game.
We all know about the bitter rivalry between East Coast versus West Coast rap in the '90s gangster rap led by Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Then there have been battles between Drake and Meek Mill or Jay-Z and Nas. But men aren't always the ones involved in these feuds.
Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion's long-simmering tension has the potential to cement itself among some of the most bitter battles between female rappers. The relationship between the once friends and collaborators has deteriorated beyond belief, transforming into a radioactive catastrophe that pulls others into its wake. While Megan publicly took the first shot with her venomous diss track "Hiss," with a bar calling out Minaj's marriage to a registered sex offender, the beef started way before the hit diss track gagged the rap world.
In 2019, the up and coming Houston rapper collaborated with the self-proclaimed Queen of Rap for their hit Billboard Top 10 song "Hot Girl Summer." It's widely unknown why the pair fell out but people believe after Megan collaborated with Cardi B for pandemic-hit "WAP," the Megan and Minaj relationship began to sour. Minaj unfollowed Megan on Instagram in 2021, and thus a beef was born. Since then the rappers have barely interacted in person. But now Minaj has dropped her diss track "Big Foot" in response to "Hiss," in which she claims that Megan was never shot by convicted rapper Tory Lanez who now is serving 10 years for shooting crime.
But outside of Megan, Minaj is known for shading other female rappers online through her Apple Music Radio show "Queen Radio" and her continuous and potentially toxic use of X.
From Cardi B to Mariah Carey, here is Minaj's laundry list of petty beef with other artists, showing a pattern of Minaj's mistrust and constant competition with other successful Black women rappers and artists:
2007: Remy Ma
When you're a young rapper in the game ready to make a splash on the scene, you're going to go for the heavy hitters and that's exactly what happened between Remy Ma and Minaj. The young, green rapper was up against one of the greatest female rappers of all time who called herself the "Queen of Rap" in her song “I’m.” But Minaj took a stab at the rapper with the freestyle “Dirty Money."
Publicly, when the pair was asked about their relationship they seemed quite friendly until they started shading each other in their music. But their beef really came to a head in 2017 with the song “Shether,” where Ma called out Minaj directly sharing the song on Twitter and adding the rapper's handle in the tweet. In response, Minaj released two diss tracks called "No Frauds” and "Realize."
2009: Lil Kim
After a brief miscommunication, the relationship between the veteran Lil Kim and the younger rapper turned to ice. However, without knowing beforehand, both were featured on the same song with the rapper Birdman. In it, Lil Kim rapped, "They’ll never be another me/What, you out your mind?" People read that line as taking aim at Minaj. Other rappers like Ray J and Drake got involved, stirring up the drama between the women. In 2010, Kim said publicly that Minaj had been taking unwarranted shots at her and other female rappers. But it's not like Kim had nice words for Minaj either, rapping, "I’d kill that b***h with my old s**t/This s**t come and go."
While she was promoting her new album "Pink Friday," Minaj responded, saying, "Put your music out and when I see your name on Billboard that’s when I’ll respond to you." She continued, "You’re going to go down in history now as a sore loser, as opposed to going down in history as the Queen . . . Don’t play with me."
In response to "Pink Friday," Kim dropped "Black Friday," a direct diss to Minaj's new album. More recently, in 2017, Kim collaborated with another rival of Minaj's Remy Ma for the song "Wake Me Up." In the song, she said "You b***hes ain’t humble enough," about Minaj.
2012: Mariah Carey
We all watched the feud between Mariah Carey and Minaj play out comically as it was broadcast on "American Idol" in 2012 when the divas were both judges. But the beef allegedly escalated behind the scenes with an apparent gun threat.
In an infamous argument disagreeing over one contestant’s performance, Carey and Minaj yelled expletives at each other. Minaj said, “I told them I’m not f**king putting up with her f**king highness over there. Off with her head.”
Carey responded, "Oh why, why do I have a three-year-old sitting around me? I can’t see my kids, because you decided to act like a little crazy b***h and go all around the stage.”
The screaming match was caught on tape with judge Keith Urban seated in the middle of the musicians.
Ryan Seacrest said at the time, “There was a very heated, intense argument towards the end of the day after a contestant did a little bit of a performance in the room . . . It did go too far, to the point where the producers said with just a few more contestants left, ‘Let’s call it a day.’”
2017: Cardi B
The most important beef by far though is Minaj's rivalry with rapper Cardi B. It informs the current beef with Megan. Cardi's accession as a rapper threatened the comfort of Minaj's Queen of Rap moniker. In 2017, Cardi's "Bodak Yellow" successfully rose to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, a position that Minaj had tried to secure for years at that time. Nevertheless, she was supportive of the newcomer until their song "Motorsport" with rap trio Migos dropped.
The song featured both Nicki and Cardi, and their respective parts fueled rumors that the rappers feuding, even though both denied the claims. These are men in our culture who simply refuse to let it go,” Minaj tweeted. “They don’t do this to male M.C.s.”
Once the music video for the song dropped, however, everything went to hell. Cardi revealed that they had shot their scenes separately and that Minaj's original verses for the song were different. This prompted Minaj to tweet, "The corniest thing you can be is ungrateful. Give thanks."
A year later in an interview with DJ Zane Lowe, when asked about her relationship with Cardi, Minaj said, "The only thing that Cardi did that really hurt my feelings was the first interview after 'Motorsport' came out. . . . It just really hurt me because the only thing she kept saying was, 'I didn't hear that verse. She changed her verse.'"
She went on to say that she really supported her but she had "never seen her show me genuine love" and that she can "imagine how many girls wish they could of been on a song with Nicki Minaj. I’m not saying it in a cocky way.”
Cardi addressed the misunderstanding on Howard Stern's radio show and said the two had hashed it out at the 2018 Met Gala. “I never was feuding with anybody," she said. "There was a misunderstanding. She felt a certain type of way about something and I definitely felt a certain type of way about something."
But that certainly wasn't the end of their ongoing miscommunication. The tension, tweets and the diss tracks off of Minaj's album "Queen," all came to a head during a New York Fashion Week Harper's Bazaar party. It was reported that Minaj and Cardi had gotten into a physical altercation that resulted in Cardi coming out of the fight with a large bump on her forehead.
In some videos, Cardi is seen taking off one of her high heels to throw it seemingly at Minaj's direction while yelling, "Play with me b***h . . . Keep f**king playing with me, play with my f**king kid b***h . . . I'll f**k your a** up,” while Nicki is protected by security. The fight allegedly started because Cardi approached Minaj "to address the lies Nicki was spreading.”
Ultimately, the back and forth between the singers continues as now Megan has been involved since she collaborated with Cardi for "WAP" in 2020. It seems like Minaj believes there's only room for one female rapper in the industry and she continues to cut all ties with her peers to get there.
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