Rap beef is back and thank god for that
Nicki vs Megan
BY LAUREN FACENTE
Am I a Nicki fan? As of late, that's been a hard question to answer. I believe any hardship can be faced by blaring Pound The Alarm or Barbie Dreams on repeat for a few hours. However, over the past few weeks, Nicki Minaj has gone on a disappointing series of Twitter rants (I will never refer to Twitter as X. You can't make me) regarding Megan Thee Stallion. The female rappers have a bit of history dating back to their collaboration on the hit song “Hot Girl Summer,” which was released back in 2019. However, since that summer the rappers’ friendship has gone ice cold. If you are as chronically online as I am, you probably are aware that Nicki Minaj is not one to shy away from a fight. The Nicki Minaj vs Cardi B fight of 2018 at New York Fashion Week is one of my favorite celebrity feuds of all time, mostly due to the photo evidence of the lump on Cardi’s head and the alleged moment when Cardi threw a shoe at Nicki. A big reason for her past and current controversy is due to Minaj’s “pick a side” mentality. In more recent years Megan has done much more collaboration with artist Cardi B, who has a long standing feud with Minaj.
Fan bases play a very large role in making an artist either an enemy, or a collaborator. Nicki is a huge artist within the rap community, and has amassed a huge fan base. Nicki’s fans, whom she lovingly refers to as “The Barbz',” are known to be fierce in defending their idol. This seems to be a big reason why cancel culture has yet to take her under, and hasn't harmed her career. The Barbz are a large fanbase with many identifying within LGBTQ communities. Such a diverse fanbase and wide target audience show us the magnitude of defenses behind the “Queen of Rap.”.
In Nicki’s recent one-way feud with Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki took to Twitter to share her thoughts on Megan’s new song, titled “Hiss.” Nicki was particularly upset by a line where Megan raps about a US federal law called Megan's Law. Megan’s Law requires sex offenders to be publicly registered. Ironically enough, Nicki was the one to explicitly attach her own name to this line when she accused Megan of coming after her family with it. Nicki’s husband, Kenneth Petty, pleaded guilty to attempted rape at age 16. In 2022, Petty moved to California. He was sentenced to a year of house arrest after failing to register at his new address. Personally, if an artist came after my husband for being an unregistered sex offender, I don't know if I would take to Twitter to show my loyalty. Nicki, however, went on a Twitter rant for days regarding this alleged callout by Megan. Throughout her Twitter tyranny, she claimed Megan made offensive comments on her pregnancy, and lied about having plastic surgery. This is what made Minaj drop her own diss track against Megan, titled “Bigfoot.”
The tables seemed to turn on Minaj after crafting the worst diss track most Twitter users have ever heard. I love a good Nicki verse and have playlists that are consumed with her songs (Va Va Voom has been a personal favorite recently) but I could not get myself to even pretend to enjoy “Bigfoot.” The song seemed to particularly allude to the 2020 case Megan was involved in after rapper Tory Lanez shot her in the foot. This led to further controversy over Nicki’s song due to its sensitive subject matter. I thought it was especially distasteful of Nicki to include lyrics alluding to Megan’s late mother, along with multiple instances of slut shaming. Megan has yet to respond to anything Minaj posted on Twitter, or to the diss track itself. In fact, Megan has continued to post as normal and even went on Instagram Live a few days ago. During it she completely ignored the drama, and was in good spirits about the success of her song “Hiss.” I'm sorry to all the Barbz out there, but I'm going to let Megan take her victory lap on this one.
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