Nicki Minaj has responded to questions regarding Drake’s status with Young Money Cash Money Billionaires. During a recent interview with New York radio station Hot 97, Minaj was asked whether Drake is in Young Money or not and Minaj offered what she said sounded like a riddle as her answer.
“Is he not in Young Money?” Hot 97’s Funkmaster Flex said to Minaj. “I’m not saying it wrong but something is definitely not the same as the first album [with Drake]. That’s how I feel. How do you feel?”
“Peoples’ perception of their reality is their perception of their reality,” Minaj said. “Sometimes people make moves based on their perception of what reality is. I know that sounds like a riddle, but maybe one day you’ll be able to unravel that one. All I can say is this, Lil Wayne is everything to me. I can’t speak for anyone else. What Young Money and Cash Money did for Nicki Minaj, I can never repay them for. So, I am forever indebted to them. Whatever happens with any other artist, I don’t know.
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“[Drake’s] so talented,” she continued. “Sometimes, we’ve seen this. Sometimes when you’re really intelligent and you’re really talented, you also think a lot. Sometimes your mind is racing with thoughts. It is what it is. People go through their own motions and you’ve gotta respect it and keep it moving. We all love the team. We all love Wayne. That’s what’s gonna always hold us together. Drake is my baby because that’s how it was when we came in. So whenever I think of him, ‘That’s my baby.’ Whatever is going on now, obviously we’re all very busy and you know, shit happens. It gets a little hard to have a real connection when people are on different sides of the world, working on different things. You just never know who people got in their ear or what they’re feeling or maybe they felt wronged in some way. I don’t know. I just know that Drake is my baby and Wayne is my everything.”
“On a lot of his songs, he makes references to making appearances or people asking him for appearances on a song,” Flex said to Minaj. “I hear him talk about that or people sweating him for a verse…Did you ever feel like he was responding to somebody specific? Did you ever feel he was referring to you on those songs or not really?”
“I’ve never taken that personal,” Minaj said. “I think that when you are in a place where Drake is, which is, everybody is asking him for a verse or a feature, sometimes, it is what it is. He’s speaking the truth. However he decides to take that, whether he is taking that as a compliment or not, I don’t know. But, he’s speaking the truth and I think he’s speaking about every-damn-body. I’m not exempt from that and neither is anyone else. If you’ve been asking him for a verse or a song or done a verse or a song with him, then maybe you are included. I don’t know, but he’s not lying.”
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The interview can be heard below, courtesy of Hot 97, as streamed by Late Nite Creep.
Drake and Nicki Minaj have collaborated on several songs, including “Make Me Proud” and “Champion.” Drake has said that he feels Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne are “iconic.”
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“Nicki is such a character and Wayne is such a character,” Drake said in a 2011 interview with Power 106. “There’s people that dress up like them for Halloween. There’s people that wanna talk like them, be like them, get tattoos like Wayne, and do their hair like Nicki. I mean they’re so iconic. That’s also something I always try to push myself with my music ’cause I feel like that’s the only way I can be iconic. I’m just sort of a more stripped down individual as far as image wise, so that’s always something I pay attention to.”
Drake said in the same interview that the relationship he has with Minaj can become “competitive.”
“As much as it’s loving, it’s also competitive because competition pushes,” Drake said. “We push each other. When I hear Nicki get on a verse and kill the way she does, it doesn’t even become a male/female thing because it’s beyond that. Like she’s rapping better than a lot of males out there period, so it just becomes a verse thing.”
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Drake has denied rumors that he’s leaving Young Money for years. “I’ll tell you if you wake up in the morning and you think Young Money ain’t my team, you out of your mothafucking mind,” he said at a 2011 concert.
