What’s #NickiDay without a little drama? After the self-proclaimed Queen of Rap made her triumphant return on Thursday (April 12) with “Barbie Tingz” and “Chun-Li,” social media went wild, especially when Minaj’s original “MotorSport” verse surfaced online.
In the song, Minaj raps, “If Cardi B the QB/ I’m Nick Lombardi,” which many perceived to be a diss aimed at the current rap princess.
Despite telling her side of “MotorSport” drama in her interview with Beats 1 Radio, Black Barbie hit Twitter to defend herself once again and blamed Atlantic Records — Cardi’s label — for making her change her verse.
“How can you say someone changed their verse & forget to say Quavo TOLD me to remove my singing part (which I loved) & Atlantic told me to remove your name from my verse per your request?” she wrote. “So how were those changes gonna happen if I didn’t ‘change’ my verse?”
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Cardi addressed “MotorSport” in an interview with Capital XTRA last November, roughly one month after the track initially dropped.
“When I heard the track, her verse wasn’t finished,” she said. “It was not the verse it was right now. Quavo told me to get on the song. I felt like it was a perfect opportunity to be big like them.”
In the interview with Beats 1 Radio, Minaj admitted some of Cardi’s statements “really, really really hurt” her. [apple_news_ad type=”any”]
(The original version of this story was published on April 12, 2018 at 12:14 p.m. PST and can be found below.)
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Nicki Minaj stopped by Beats 1 Radio to sit down for an interview with Zane Lowe where she not only premiered her two new singles — “Barbie Tingz” and “Chun-Li” — but also opened up about a bevy of topics, including Cardi B.
Lowe alluded to a recently leaked song snippet that featured a lyric (“I never had to strip to get the pole position”) rumored to be aimed at Cardi B. Minaj quickly killed that notion.
“That’s a rumor?” Minaj asked. “I have no clue. I wrote that song in Paris about a year and a half ago. It was for a Drake record. That’s how long ago it was. Shout out to Cardi and all the female rappers doing their thing.”
But then things took a different direction. Minaj touched on the Migos track “MotorSport” featuring Cardi and herself, and how she felt about the first interview Cardi did after the song came out.
“With Cardi B, she’s done exactly what she should’ve done,” she said. “She’s just gone full steam ahead and congratulations to her. The only thing with Cardi that really, really, really hurt my feeling was the first interview she did after ‘MotorSport’ came out. I remember when I first came in the game, if a female of that stature had done a feature with me on it, I would only be singing their praises and saying thank you.
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“The first interview she did after ‘Motorsport’ came out, it just really hurt me, cause she looked so aggravated and angry and the only thing that she kept saying was, ‘Oh I didn’t hear that, I didn’t hear that verse, she changed her verse.”
Minaj added she felt “ambushed” by Quavo. [apple_news_ad type=”any”]
“With ‘Motorsport’ I kind of felt ambushed,” she explained. “Quavo was my baby. I loved Quavo. At the time, I went on Twitter and I explained how ‘Motorsport’ came about and people were saying that I was lying. So I texted Quavo and I said, ‘Can you back me up on this? Cause I don’t want people to think I’m lying’ and he didn’t back me up. He texted me back like ‘I would go on Twitter and back you up if you were my girl lol’ and that hurt because I love him. And there are certain rappers that I call my baby — Quavo, Uzi, Swae Lee — and so Quavo told me ‘I’m not gonna go on Twitter and address that shit. If I do an interview then I’ll address it.’
“I was like ‘yikes’ because it hurt my feelings because I can be slaughtered and not one person will step in to say the truth. They will run with that lie because it’s entertaining. To make Nicki seem like a bad guy.”
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As she continued, Black Barbie set the record straight on not only how the song came about but also that she gave her blessing for Cardi to be on the song.
“First of all, Quavo came to my studio and played ‘MotorSport,'” she said. “He was the only person on ‘MotorSport.’ I said that’s a hit … I wanna get on that one. He wanted me to get on a record called ‘She For Keeps.’ I said, ‘No please, please, please let’s do MotorSport.’ He came back after and said, ‘All the guys gonna be on MotorSport’ and I said, yeah, I figured that because I knew that they were working on their group album.
‘He texted me and said, ‘Is it ok to put Cardi on it.’ And I still have the text in my phone where I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ And that’s the only story I told. I said exactly how it came about and when it was time to clear the air about that, no one did that. All of them allowed me to look like I lied and even with the scheduling conflict — [Cardi] is using my hairdresser now, so even he [their hairdresser Tokyo Stylez] can attest to the fact Tokyo, he knows that there really was a scheduling conflict.
“It was because of him. He’s the one who couldn’t show up and I text him and said you know that if I don’t show up the day that she’s shooting they’re gonna act like it’s because I’m doing it to be mean with the current Nicki Hate Train. He wasn’t able to come, he had something to do and that’s fine. So I had to shoot on another day. They all knew that, especially if you’re using my hairdresser now … And you still did interviews and y’all all still jumped around that just to paint Nicki as the bad person so that you could play the victim. That really, really hurt me.”
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Minaj blames what she calls the “Nicki Hate Parade” for allowing Cardi to speak about her the way she did.
“I really fully supported her and up until this recent interview she did, I had never seen her show me genuine love in an interview and I could just imagine how many girls wish they could’ve been on a song with Nicki Minaj. I’m not saying it in a cocky way, but like … [sniffles] … yikes. I’m not saying it in a cocky way, but the first thing out of your mouth when someone asks you about a Nicki Minaj feature is [loudly imitating Cardi], ‘She changed her verse’ … Excuse me?
“It’s because of the Nicki Hate Parade that she felt the comfortability to address me in that manner.”
Later in the interview, Lil Wayne and Birdman called in separately who both praised Minaj for her impact on the culture.[apple_news_ad type=”any”]
